Work performed
Our work revolved three discrete strands of the proposed SAUL system, but before delving into those strands it’s important to lay out the foundations that were built to allow us to build three innovative and discrete product features.
Vizlegal has moved from a beta to a fully featured product in terms of several core feature:
We have built a production Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) system that can scale to address any of our future needs to extract data from public websites, and deal with any formats (PDF, Word, etc), including Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of scanned documents.
We have a fully featured API that can integrate with other systems.
We have built a fully featured Elastic cluster that allows us to index our growing document database
We have built a production web application for desktop, that can also be used as a Progressive Web Application (PWA) for iOS/Android on mobile or tablets.
We have ingested close to 1m documents from multiple courts, quasi-judicial tribunals and courts systems in four jurisdictions. These documents have been parsed into highly structured data, and are fully indexed
These core features were either built or improved upon during the course of SME-1. This included a switch to a new frontend framework that allowed us to adapt for (4), based on user feedback requiring a greater focus on mobile accessibility than we had originally envisaged.
The resulting production product now addresses a number of fundamental problems for both barristers and solicitors, particularly in the Irish market. But we see this needs as being addressable across multiple and larger markets in similar contexts to the Irish one.
Core features:
During the course of SME-1 we improved or built from scratch new UI elements for each of these core features. Because of a focus on mobile accessibility in SME-1, all of these features have also become easily accessible on phones and tablets.
Search; Suggestions; Filters. This feature is a core need for users to either search the documents in our database quickly, or find a document they know we have quickly (suggestions); and rapidly zone in their searches through a process of filtering by jurisdiction, court etc.
Advanced search. Build a query as fine tuned as possible, before searching and filtering.
Bookmarks. Users can bookmark a judgment for example, and tag that judgment with keywords.
Alerts. Users can create alerts such as “alert me when a new judgment appears that contains the phrase “freedom of information”, specified by the user for any or all courts.
Case tracking. In the Irish High Court context, a feature that allows litigators to track the progress of their case over time, and be alerted when changes occur on the public file. This can act as an early warning for litigators, while also assisting with case management.
Rapid SAUL prototypes:
Each of these prototypes were built during the course of SME-1.
Consolidated Court Rules and Practice Directions (PDs) (Version 1) (Fully featured)
In the Irish context, a consistent pain outlined during the course of user interviews was a frustration around court rules and PDs. In order for any practitioner, both solicitors and barristers, to engage with the courts system they must rely on the rules of the courts set by statute.
Rules are amended on average every 3-4 weeks by new statutes, along with brand new rules and PDs being introduced. This has a direct effect on practitioners, as it affects how they carry out their work. Existing solutions are deemed inadequate - either books, or an out-of-date official website. There are risks, including reputational and practice risks, to a practitioner using a rule that is out of date.
To address this we hand-consolidated all the rules of Irish courts going back to their origins in 1986. To do this we also built a bespoke Git-based document versioning system, which allows us to “version” the laws over time. We improved the aesthetic of the rules by applying indents correctly, greatly improving legibility.
We also comprehensively link between the rules themselves, and link to subsections of primary legislation, when cited inside the rules. We are also the first to market with a mobile accessible consolidated court rules product.
We are in the course of completing an identical product for England & Wales Civil Procedure Rules (CPRs) and Practice Directions (PDs). This will also be the first mobile accessible product in the English market.
Law firm analytics (Prototype)
In order to build a search tool for finding case details in the Irish High Court system, we used ETL to extract more than 500,000 case records dating back to 1990. The secondary purpose was for us to build a versioning system so we could provider users with alerts to tracking cases (such as “alert me when the date of my case is to be mentioned in court is added to the case file”).
However a natural consequence of obtaining and cleaning this data was that we had a significant amount of data about who sues whom in court, and what firms represent what clients.
We built a prototype legal intelligence tool, that displays a profile of every law firm in the database that displays information such as; volume of cases by type for a firm over time; a user ability to specify timeframes (all time, 10 years, 5 years, 3 months etc); a list of all clients by case volume per client over specified time periods.
We believe this to be the foundation for law firm intelligence products both in Ireland and across more jurisdictions, and this is the first of its kind in Ireland.
Judge profiles (Prototype)
Similar to law firm analytics, judge profiles are possible as a result of parsing and cleaning data Vizlegal has obtained from public sources. Because many courts systems don’t use unique identifiers for the judges who deliver judgments, or use standard structured data for the names of judges, we spent some effort standardising and structured all of the judges in the Irish jurisdiction.
With this we have built a discrete prototype, particular with barristers in mind. The profiles allow legal practitioners to a) quickly search the judgments of a particular judge for particular words and phrases quickly and easily on desktop or mobile b) see all recent judgments by judge c) see data on the judgment volume of any judge over time, and by court d) access basic biographical information about each judge.
