TOOL SUPPORT FOR LEGAL ENQUIRY
Focus on spatial-planning law
Eriks Sneiders
Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University / Royal Institute of Technology
Forum 100, SE-16440, Kista, Sweden
Keywords: Legal information systems, Law text retrieval, Legal support tools.
Abstract: An ideal “law machine” comprises a number of tools and technologies for data processing, storing,
exchange, and retrieval. The paper identifies classes of tools and sample tools that support legal enquiry
where spatial-planning and environmental law has been taken as the exemplar. Not only the traditional
means of text processing and retrieval (e.g., search, taxonomy building, text mark-up, etc.) but also
geographic information systems (GIS) and related standards are examined. Furthermore, a number of
accompanying tools help to better utilize and make sense of the retrieved legal information. Except GIS,
which is particularly convenient for spatial-planning legislation, the identified classes of tools are not
specific to any particular area of law.
1 INTRODUCTION
Citizens and organizations experience increased
complexity of the legal framework of their day to
day operations. Legal professionals are recruited to
query regional regulations, national law, EU
directives and to interpret the results of the enquiry.
As the situation becomes financially prohibitive,
many citizens and small businesses seek initial help
from paralegal intermediaries, such as citizen-advice
organizations, trade bodies, etc. They provide a
limited level of support on legal matters based
mostly on professional experience rather than formal
legal education or active legal-information support
available to them.
Add-Wijzer (2004) is an EU eContent (2004)
project that combines existing legal information with
existing technologies and thus creates a gateway
between the user (advanced citizen or paralegal
intermediary) and the legal databases. Spatial-
planning and environmental law has been taken as
the exemplar. Two test beds – JustCite (2004) for
text-based and Legal Atlas (2004) for map-based
law access – are employed. JustCite extends the
Justis portal (2004) for UK law and EU directives,
whereas Legal Atlas is built from scratch to handle
regional and municipal spatial-planning law in the
Netherlands.
While it is accepted that legal practitioners
access legal information, little is known of their
research practices (Leith & Hoey 1998, pp. 110-
112). Therefore an extensive requirements analysis
has been done during the project. Some 40
interviews were carried out with lawyers, planners,
policy makers, non-governmental organizations,
members of farming community, etc. Leith and
McCullagh (2003) report on the first part of the
interviews, as well as present a theoretical
discussion on the use of information technologies in
the legal community.
This paper continues the work started in (Leith
& McCullagh 2003) and a large amount of still
unpublished material. The paper identifies classes of
tools and sample tools motivated by the
requirements analysis. Furthermore, the paper
discusses map-based access to location-specific law,
which is relevant for spatial-planning legislation.
2 OVERALL ACCESS TO LEGAL
INFORMATION
Until the late 1990s, CD-ROM was a well-
established means of electronic publishing of legal
information. Nonetheless, CD-ROM has
disadvantages, such as no common user interface
standard and material out of date. AustLII (2004)
states: “Materials distributed via CD-ROM are
expensive to produce, cannot be updated as
289
Sneiders E. (2004).
TOOL SUPPORT FOR LEGAL ENQUIRY - Focus on spatial-planning law.
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frequently and create further technical problems.
AustLII is a small organization with few resources
and the World Wide Web provides the most suitable
method of distribution for our materials.” The
Internet indeed offers a means of accessing
information which is inexpensive and not bound to
any particular location. Therefore our test beds
JustCite and Legal Atlas are two web portals that
allow:
– publishing proprietary material
– linking to material published elsewhere
– access to regularly updated information
– combining textual and graphical information,
which is especially important for spatial-
planning law
– integration of the information with means of
communication such as e-mail or discussion
groups, or even Internet telephone
– access to information “as and when you need it”,
given access to the Internet
The overall features of the desired access
methods are simplicity and functionality: one-stop-
shop, “no flashing graphics”, focus on usable
information. From the interviews: “I have no legal
training. I would appreciate an idiot-proof guide to
accessing and understanding legal information.” “A
lot of policy-makers are aware of their knowledge
limitations regarding law. This causes stress in the
department. […] I am the first in-house lawyer, and
now colleagues are stressed that they can’t get
instant answers from me.”
3 PUBLISHING AND RETRIEVAL
OF LEGAL TEXT
Text documents are the most common carriers of
legal information. The JustCite portal, operated by
Context Ltd., is our demonstrator of text publishing
and retrieval tools. JustCite, which is the only
provider-neutral legal research service available,
combines content from different publishers and
includes links to full-text material on leading online
services such as Justis, Butterworths, BAILII,
Westlaw, Informa’s Lloyd’s Law Reports,
Casetrack, and EUR–Lex.
3.1 Keyword-Based Search
The search engine behind the front-end on JustCite
is Hummingbird SearchServer. The search engine
delivers information indexing and searching for
desktop and web-based applications. It supports
searching by different fields marked up in the data
and supports a wide range of Boolean operators and
wild cards.
HummingBird SearchBuilder is a toolkit for
building UNIX and MS Windows-based search
applications. SearchBuilder can be used for cross-
platform development with applications developed
in C, C++, MS Visual Basic, and Java.
3.2 Text Mark-Up
Data for the JustCite portal is stored in XML and
displayed in HTML or XHTML. CCDF (Context
Compound Document Format) is an XML compliant
database tagging system owned by Context Ltd.
CCDF represents the formal structure of a
document. Structures that are common to documents
from different sources are given common structure
tags, thus facilitating cross product searching
through a common interface. The development of
CCDF was based on the following requirements:
– the CCDF language must be simple enough to
ensure an acceptable level of accuracy
– any information tagged in CCDF format must be
convertible to other standard tagging systems
such as XHTML without manual intervention
3.3 Taxonomy Building and
Document Tagging
Search and navigation capabilities are enhanced by
assigning subject terms (tagging) and categorization
of legal documents, which requires appropriate
software. JustCite uses GammaWare from
GammaSite. The process of using this technology
consists of the following steps:
– Development of a legal taxonomy. JustCite uses
a new legal taxonomy developed by Context Ltd.
GammaSite provides tools that enable
constructing and editing the taxonomy, fine-tune
its tree structure, insert where required links
between categories.
– Training of the GammaWare system. This stage
involves selection of at least five training
documents for each of the taxonomy nodes.
These documents are then used to train the
system and the GammaSite tools are used to
analyse the results, view the factors that affected
categorization results and fine-tune the process.
– Production phase. In the production phase
documents are classified using the GammaWare
software without the need of manual
intervention.
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3.4 Cross-referencing
Pieces of law need to be cross-referenced. The portal
should have links to EU legislation, domestic
legislation, case law, government reports, and
explanatory information regarding the intended aim
of the legislation.
Conventional hypertext systems require each
hypertext link to be identified when a dataset is
created, with the link to the referenced document
pre-set. For large data sets this would be a massive
and uneconomical task. Context Ltd. has developed
a reference recognition system known as J-Link. J-
Link has been further extended into a generic system
known as Syntalex, which is able to analyse digital
text on the fly and convert reference information
into active hypertext links.
The generality and flexibility of the engine has
been achieved through a rule-based design, and the
behaviour of the engine is controlled and determined
by the use of rule files. Each rule file contains one or
more rules, each of which comprises two distinct
components:
– The matching component describes and defines a
specific type of text pattern, such as a document
citation or other type of reference.
– The action component specifies a type of action
that is to be carried out once the conditions
specified by the matching component have been
satisfied. Examples include creating a hypertext
link, outputting information to a database,
retrieving specific information from an online
resource, and sending an email alert.
3.5 Consolidated Legislation
The interviews show the need for consolidation of
law documents. “If we were to pay for a computer
system – we would like information to be
consolidated e.g. consolidated versions of legislation
– otherwise it is not a financially worthwhile
improvement on existing materials.” “A computer
system [should provide] ways of knowing which
provisions are in force (e.g. strike through of
amendments). Consolidation of legislation would be
an added advantage, especially consolidation of
statutory instruments.”
For example, a law can be passed, then amended
some years later and amended again after that. The
amendments just state the words and paragraphs to
be changed, so one needs to consolidate them with
the original legislation to be able to make any sense
of them. UK legislation databases are not
consolidated. Consolidated legislation means that
the publisher has included all amendments that have
been made to an act. To do consolidation of all
planning law manually by using legal editors would
be very expensive and take a long time. Currently
there are no tools that can fully automate this work.
JustCite provides links to all other acts that make
the amendments so that people can do the
consolidation of a particular section of an act if they
wish to do so.
3.6 Summaries and Comments on
Legal Documents
An ideal “law machine” should explain the history
and function of legal documents, give interpretative
summaries with hyperlinks to full decisions. “This
provides quick, convenient access to legal
information – in a profession where speed is of the
essence.” “Access to relevant case law would be
useful.”
For most of the case law products, Context Ltd.
gets a data feed from law publishers. Their editors
manually summarize the reports. There are no good
tools for automatic summarizing of legislation. All
attempts to introduce such tools at Context Ltd. have
failed.
Adding comments to legal documents is related
to consolidation (Section 3.5). An alternative way of
obtaining opinions and comments is discussion
forums (Section 5.2).
3.7 Space for Improvements
Within the Add-Wijzer project, a number of tests
have been carried out in order to determine the
usability of existing legal text retrieval systems
BAILII, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, EUR-Lex,
Justis, LexisNexis, and Westlaw. Tests were carried
out with seven non-lawyers who came from a
planning or environmental background but had no
experience in law, and five lawyers who had a
background in law but were not necessarily fully
qualified lawyers. Among the discovered technical
problems were:
– information overload
– confusion caused by layout and labelling
– recognition of icons
– too many mandatory form fields
– too many irrelevant items in search result
– poor recognition of plural forms and synonyms
(e.g., “vs.” and “versus”),
– poor ability of the system to retrieve a document
by its title
– navigation inside the retrieved document
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One test person was very frustrated when he
entered the search term “Environmental Protection
Act 1990” in BAILII and was returned 747 results
that seemed to included everything but what he was
looking for. “Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act
2001” was returned first noted as having 100%
relevance. Another test person became frustrated
when she was looking for “Directive 94/62” in
Justis, typed the search term “Directive 94/62” into
the search box, and the correct document was
returned as result number 26.
People who are not computer professional
appreciate simple input. About the interface on
LexisNexis: “Too fussy… way too much stuff. You
get used to search engines and like Google for
example, it’s just one great huge bar that you put the
information into.”
If legal publishers wish to improve the quality of
their service, a good source to learn from is
commercial Internet search engines which have put a
lot of effort into their relevance-ranking algorithms.
Web documents and legal documents share two core
features – structured text and interlinked documents.
Search Engine Optimisation is a new industry, 2-
3 years old, that originates from web-design. It does
not deal with optimisation of search engines, as the
name suggests, but rather with optimisation of
websites for top positioning on search engines.
Search engine optimisers are well-aware of the
features that influence relevance ranking most. Their
knowledge can help in the design and
implementation of legal text retrieval systems.
4 MAP-BASED ACCESS TO
LOCATION-SPECIFIC LAW
Legal Atlas, operated by Framfab Nederland,
provides access to regulations through a map-view
on the legislation (Peters & van Engers 2004). In
this view, law is retrievable knowledge objects
rather than hierarchical structure of legal text. Dutch
spatial-planning standards support such
objectification of law and further linking of law
objects to geo-spatial objects on the map. The
approach allows challenging the traditional question
“I want this here… Is it possible?” by targeting the
reverse question, “I want this… Show me where it is
possible!” A typical application area for Legal Atlas
is urban planning where the user interrogates the
system, and the system responds via a digital map as
well as more traditional representations such as text.
Legal Atlas is still in the stage of the first
prototype. Nonetheless, interviews with intended
users show that the system has a good market
potential. The prototype has caused some changes in
the meta-data strategies for local law applied by the
Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs.
4.1 DURP and IMRO
The corner stone of spatial-planning law in the
Netherlands is zoning plan (“bestemmingsplan”) – a
map with legal information attached to spatial-
planning objects. Zoning plans are legally binding,
they are a form of legislation.
DURP (2004) is the initiative on digital
exchange of legal spatial planning data started by
the Dutch Ministry of Spatial Affairs and
Environmental Issues. DURP invites organizations,
including the large number of municipalities, to
standardize their digital zoning plans, which
facilitates interoperability between different layers
of government while dealing with spatial planning.
DURP introduces a standard for exchange of
spatial planning data called IMRO (2004). About
one thousand IMRO codes formally define the
purpose and functionality of spatial planning objects.
Together with textual “voorschrift” (prescription),
the codes tell the user what is and is not allowed in
various IMRO-coded areas on the map. Legal Atlas
makes use of the coding and enables querying of the
underlying legal system using a detailed map
representing legal constraints and possibilities.
4.2 Geographic Information Systems
(GIS)
GIS software helps to create and visualize graphic
information (usually geo-spatial maps), and to
interact with it. A distinguished feature of GIS is
representation of visual information in layers as a
means of information filtering. A user combines the
layers according to his or her information needs.
Legal Atlas uses Autodesk MapGuide.
MapGuide Viewer, a web-browser plug-in, offers
display, query, and analytical features for a variety
of platforms and browsers.
Open GIS Consortium (2004) is leading the
development of geo-processing interoperability
computing standards to create open and extensible
APIs for geographic information systems. In other
words, Open GIS standards make sure that GIS tools
from different vendors can cooperate. MapGuide is
Open GIS compliant.
Legal Atlas uses ISIS FlexiWeb (2004) as the
main user interface – a shell around MapGuide that
enables the combination of SQL queries of legal
texts with GIS retrieval of related map objects.
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5 INFRASTRUCTURE AROUND A
LEGAL INFORMATION
SYSTEM
The users of law retrieval systems need more than
just an ability to query a database. The most
important bonus features are interpretation of law
and access to related information. The tools
presented in this section do not lie in the focus of the
Add-Wijzer project. It is, however, recommended
that a well-established law publisher consider using
them as additional services for the convenience of its
customers.
5.1 Help-Lines and FAQ Lists, Legal
Self-service
A computerized system does not interpret law for a
particular case, it does not do practical application of
law. Therefore “there should be an option of
contacting a human as a last resort if you can’t find
or understand information” (citation from the
interviews). The “last resort” apparently is a lawyer
or paralegal intermediary.
People tend to ask the same questions over and
over again, therefore websites often organize
compilations of frequently asked questions (FAQ).
People may prefer consulting an FAQ list prior to
asking a question to a human expert: “A telephone
hotline/online service would be ideal. It should be a
two-tiered service (1) an on-line list of FAQ’s and
answers (2) send an email/contact a person with
specific query.”
An emerging market is self-service and question-
answering systems. A prominent representative is
Kanisa, formerly known as Jeeves Solutions, which
advocates the concept of pre-packaged knowledge as
“a blueprint of knowledge for your specific
industry.” Kanisa’s Site Search Industry Solutions
(2004) contain “not only the words, terms and
concepts unique to each industry, but also a deeper
understanding of which questions are most
commonly asked and how these questions are
asked.”
Another example of on-line help service is
Psychology Free Online Medical Advice on
Web4Health.info. Both Kanisa and Web4Health
utilise the approach of template-based question
answering (Sneiders 2002).
There is little experience of introducing self-
service legal-advice systems. In fact, Legal Atlas is a
prototype of such a system which would counsel its
users before they see their expensive lawyers.
5.2 Discussion Forums
Not all information is written down. People may
contact someone they know to find out what might
happen next year, or what is going to be tolerated
despite the law. That sort of information requires
human networking, perhaps supported by mailing
lists or discussion forums.
Interviews with domain experts confirm the role
of tacit knowledge. An experienced event organizer
is well aware of the processes and procedures
involved, a lot of the information that he would have
to gather is already stored in his head. He does use
the Internet to “look for details and things like that”
but he concerns himself more with political
decisions, which greatly affect his business. “I do
heavily lean on political decisions. For that I float on
the rumour circuit. I depend a lot on this
circumstantial information.”
Looking for opinions is another case where
discussion forums may help. In order to understand
the proposed or existing legislation, one interviewed
politician who had access to a research facility also
seemed to utilize the expertise of both government
departments and non-governmental organizations.
There was a sense that he was looking for a balance
of views, and was prepared to seek these out, but not
really through looking at the sources themselves, so
much as getting interpretations from others.
What non-lawyers seem to be looking for is
some way of discussing common problems with
other people who may have solved similar problems.
Discussion forums do not provide legal advice. On
newsgroups such as uk.legal, much of the advice is
of the kind, “when you go to see your lawyer, ask
him whether X applies to your case”. Law-related
information needs not actually to contain laws at all.
E.g., an environment agency may have tolerated
particular pollution levels without prosecution in the
past, as part of a policy to prosecute only the most
serious offenders. Knowing what those levels are is
useful, but is not the law. In some countries, there
are standard rates for bribing civil servants to get
away with what is strictly illegal.
5.3 Newsletters, Alerting Services
JustCite offers an alerting service which
automatically notifies about relevant updates to the
database. The service enhances the Saved Searches
feature. It works by recognizing whenever a new
document that matches the criteria of one of the
saved searches is added to one of the JustCite
databases. An e-mail alert is sent out then. Email
alerts contain the reference, title and summary of
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each document together with a hypertext link to the
full text of the document on JustCite.
5.4 Printing and Text Editing
The interviews show that legal information systems
have insufficient printing and text editing facilities.
Some desired features are:
– an on-line copy must have the same layout as a
paper copy
– the user must be able to specify particular
sections or pages to print out
– copy and paste facility (“dislike how you can’t
copy and paste within Adobe documents”)
– printing and text editing integrated in the system,
without a need to buy sophisticated software
One interviewee noted the usefulness of the PDF
format as it meant that information could be kept “in
a file”. This appeared to imply – as with other
interviewees – that they wanted to be able to build
up (via cut and paste) their own collection of
information.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The paper identifies classes of tools and sample
tools that support legal enquiry with the focus on
spatial-planning law. The selection of tools has been
motivated by an extensive requirements analysis.
The following classes of tools and technologies
have been distinguished:
– User access through web portals.
– Publishing and retrieval of legal text: keyword-
based search tool; XML-compliant text mark-up
language; tools for taxonomy building and
document tagging; tools for cross-referencing,
consolidation, and summarizing of legal
documents.
– Geographic information systems (GIS) and
related standards: Autodesk MapGuide, Open
GIS standard, a web-based shell around
MapGuide, Dutch-specific spatial-planning
standards.
– Infrastructure around a legal information
system: help-lines and FAQ lists, discussion
forums, newsletters and alerting services,
improved printing and text-editing facilities.
Except GIS, which is particularly convenient for
spatial-planning legislation, the above classes of
tools are not specific to any particular area of law.
There is a need but no good commercially
available tools for consolidation and summarizing of
legal documents.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This has been a collaborative work. The author owes
gratitude to all the Add-Wijzer partners, especially
Philip Leith, David Newman, Karen McCullagh, and
Ursula Doherty (Queens University Belfast), Rob
Peters and Åsa Älvebrand (Framfab Nederland),
Bernadette Jansen Op De Haar (Context Ltd.), and
Frank Wilson (Interaction Design Ltd.).
REFERENCES
Add-Wijzer, 2004, http://www.addwijzer.org/
AustLII FAQ, 2004, http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/faq/
#q4.7
DURP – Digitaal uitwisselbare ruimtelijke plannen, 2004,
http://www.digitale-plannen.nl/
eContent – European Digital Content on the Global
Networks, 2004, http://www.cordis.lu/econtent/
FlexiWeb, 2004, http://www.isis.nl/isisint/flexiweb.htm
IMRO - Informatie Model Ruimtelijke Ordening, 2004,
http://www.ravi.nl/standaardisatie/imro/
JustCite, 2004, http://www.justcite.com/
Justis, 2004, http://www.justis.com/
Kanisa Site Search Industry Solutions, 2004, obtained via
http://www.kanisa.com/register_todownload.shtml
Legal Atlas, 2004, http://www.addwijzer.org/ and follow
“Demonstrator”
Leith, P. & Hoey, A. 1998. The Computerised Lawyer,
2nd revised edn, Springer-Verlag.
Leith, P. & McCullagh, K. 2003. Developing European
Legal Information Markets Based on Government
Information: First Findings from the Add-Wijzer
Project. 18th BILETA Conference: Controlling
Information in the Online Environment, April,
http://www.bileta.ac.uk/03papers/leith.html
Open GIS Consortium, 2004, http://www.opengis.org/
Peters, R. & van Engers, T. 2004. Legal Atlas: Map-Based
Navigation and Accessibility of Legal Knowledge
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(KMGov2004), Krems, Austria, May 17-19.
Sneiders, E. 2002, Automated Question Answering:
Template-Based Approach. PhD thesis, Royal Institute
of Technology, Sweden.
All URL links valid February 1, 2004.
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