How can computers be taught to read and identify the logic behind legal decisions? That is what law students at the Law, Logic and Technology (LLT) Lab at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University are studying, hoping to make analyzing court rulings easier for future attorneys.
Under the guidance of Vern Walker, a professor and director of the LLT Lab, students working in the Lab’s Vaccine/Injury Project Corpus are examining the reasoning behind legal decisions awarding or denying compensation for health problems allegedly due to vaccinations. Students evaluate how special masters, who decide vaccine cases in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, connect the evidence in each case to the findings of fact. By identifying key words, sentence patterns and the steps humans take to extract useful information from decisions, the lab hopes to help the artificial intelligence community automate some parts of the process one day.
