Canadian legal researchers got a gentle and friendly purring awakening this morning with the launch of a new pilot project to generate case analysis by artificial intelligence (AI). CatLII is back as a prolific CanLII Connects contributor that summarized hundreds of leading cases from CanLII like it was a ball of yarn.
CatLII case analysis merges the power of artificial intelligence with the grace and curiosity of a cat. Lexum Lab leveraged a leading Large Language Model (LLM) to generate short and standardized summaries.
CatLII summaries are designed in accordance with the structure of legal reasoning. Domain-specific prompt engineering enabled our furry friend to sequence facts, procedural history, parties’ submissions, legal issues, dispositions, and reasons. Each of these elements is dynamically linked to the relevant paragraphs within the body of the corresponding case, making it easy to confirm (or not!) the validity of its analysis. Nevertheless, we advise legal professionals to use their best judgments in assessing the accuracy of CatLII’s analysis.
At this stage, only a small volume of decisions from four appellate jurisdictions (SCC, ONCA, BCCA and QCCA) were analyzed by CatLII. These courts were chosen because of the availability of alternate sources of summaries and case analysis for their judgments. The objective is to facilitate comparisons between the work of CatLII and human contributors. Similar AI-powered contributions will be added to CanLII Connects soon.
Lexum Lab thinks CatLII is awesome, and we’re excited to let it slip out the door for its first day outside. But as with any pilot project, we need your feedback to make CatLII even better over time. That’s why we have embedded an online rating form in all its contributions. Make sure to let us know if you can think of any way to improve this new content.
Lexum Lab is Lexum’s research and development team. It leverages natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning and other artificial intelligence approaches and techniques to make legal information retrieval wiser, easier, and faster. We partner with leading academic researchers on concrete projects and applications that will transform the way you find, process, and share legal information.