Computerized processing of law-related tasks

The outline of this book is as follows

Computable Models of the Law and ICT: State of the Art and Trends in European Research State of the Art and Trends in European Research )

This book presents some research results from important European research projects in the field of legal technology. European research in this field has been particularly active in the last few years, often demonstrating global leadership. This is due to the efforts of individual researchers, research centers, and universities, but also due to the support of the European Union, which has devoted significant attention (and some related funding) to legal technology in various research programs, considering it a crucial aspect of e-government and an important resource for the development of the information society The project discussed here is a legal one.
The project discussed here arises from the intersection of two converging trends: the diffusion of information technology in legal activities and the development of computational models of legal knowledge and cognition. It is at this intersection that the feasibility and significance of such a project lies, providing the context for the development of effective and innovative legal technologies. Therefore, before introducing the projects and contributions included in this issue, we will briefly introduce these trends.

In recent years, technology has infiltrated every area of legal practice and plays an integral role in the daily work of legal professionals. From early text processors to cutting-edge tools in Web 2.0 environments, legal professionals have adopted many technological solutions to work faster and more efficiently. Innovation is a constant, and the ICT market in the legal sector continues to grow steadily. Today, courts and law firms are going paperless, and almost everyone, including judges, lawyers, and legal assistants, are searching for information online. Citizens can also obtain legal advice and file lawsuits through the Internet, and dispute resolution services (also known as ODR) are also on the rise. As in many other professional fields, a new paradigm is emerging in which concepts such as flexibility, simultaneity, and collaboration dominate.
Legal practice has always been an intensive knowledge work. However, technological innovations in the last few years have changed the way lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and law clerks prepare cases and draft documents and decisions. Particularly in the areas of document management, case management, time recording systems, and legal information retrieval, technology has already provided software systems and databases that have become the standard for the legal profession.1 With the advent of the Internet age, these tools have rapidly adapted to the needs of the online environment, providing more utility and services. With the advent of the Internet age, these tools are rapidly adapting to the needs of the online environment and providing more utility and services. Therefore, it is not surprising that IT spending by law firms, courts, and the judiciary is on the rise. To cite a recent example, the 2006 American Bar Association Technology Report reported that the average law firm spends between 6% and 7% of its total revenue on technology-related expenses [3]. According to the Annual Technology Survey by the journal Law Firm Inc, the 200 largest law firms in the U.S. spent an average of about $3300 per attorney, and IT spending in 2007 increased by about 15% to $11.2 million from $9.7 million in 2006 [4 The 2007 ILTA Purchasing Technol- ogy Survey (of 467 ILTA member firms) found that firms with fewer than 200 attorneys “have higher adoption rates of case management, courtroom technology, docking software, imaging/scanning/OCR, patch management, and records management software adoption rates are higher” [5,6]. It is important to note that the size of the law firm influences the use and distribution of ICT technologies. Compared to large law firms, small law firms generally have fewer staff per lawyer, usually do not arrange standard replacement cycles for PCs and laptops, and purchase rather than lease new technology. Larger firms are more likely to use virtual server software and to have metadata removal software for cleaning documents and video conferencing equipment [7].
The annual technology survey covers a wider range of ICT topics than ever before, including computing technology in law firms and courtrooms, online research, electronic data disclosure, and web-based and mobile communications. Interestingly, the technology reports themselves have become part of the legal market these days, as in almost all cases access to the full reports is either paid for or limited to members of bar associations. Let me summarize here some of the basic trends reported in these technology surveys.

The vast majority of legal professionals search for legal information online. Although there are many legal information providers, the Big Three – Thomson (Westlaw), Reed Elsevier (Lexis-Nexis), and Wolters Kluwer – together control about 85 percent of the legal information market [8]. Outside of this particular market, nearly all respondents (96 percent) to the 2007 ABA Tech Survey said they rely on the Internet for news at least once a week [8]. Specifically, the top five online resources were third party websites (72%), email newsletters (58%), email discussion lists (38%), email case alert services (37%), and online advance sheet services (30%) 8].

Electronic data disclosure (EDD) or e-discovery is “the process of collecting, storing, reviewing, and producing electronically stored information in response to a regulatory or legal investigation.”[9] According to a 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey, 16% of firms use EDD three to eleven times a year and another 13% use it EDD requests less than twice a year (57% of lawyers have never received an EDD request on behalf of a client, while this average was 62% in 2006 and 73% in 2005) [10]. Litigation support software is currently developing new tools to meet these demands. This is because e-discovery is “the new reality of litigation” and “lawyers are ultimately responsible for their mistakes to the same extent as they are for their mistakes in conducting traditional discovery” [11].

Web-based communication has also been incorporated into everyday legal practice: according to data from the 2006 AM LAW annual survey, web conferencing software was the number one choice, with 67% of the firms surveyed using it for administrative meetings, client meetings, internal training programs, and communication with colleagues. communication [12]. On the other hand, 46% of offices reported that they prohibit the use of instant messaging. This is due to internal policies to minimize the risk of inappropriate changes being made in terms of e-discovery.
In addition, technology is helping lawyers go mobile. Twenty-five percent of solo practitioners use wireless modems [13], and according to the 2004-05 ABA LTS, 88 percent of lawyers have access to the Internet even when away from the office. Not surprisingly, security is a primary concern. Offices are placing more emphasis on disaster preparedness, data protection, and other safety measures.

There is also a trend toward increased use of extranets to communicate with clients, while other collaboration technologies such as intranets and wikis are less common. On the one hand, only 5% of ABA respondents in 2007 had a blog, generally maintained by a single lawyer or a group of lawyers in the firm. On the other hand, more than half of respondents do not read blogs to stay up-to-date (22% less than once a month, 12% 1-3 times a month, and 12% more than once a week); RSS feeds are used even less frequently: 83% do not use them at all, and only 5% use them more than once a week. Finally, podcast use is still marginal, with 3 percent of respondents using podcasts at least once a week to keep up with current events, compared to 80 percent of lawyers who don’t use podcasts at all.

Metadata is increasingly becoming an issue. On the one hand, in 2006, for example, the ABA Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility ruled that opposing counsel can look at metadata to see changes and comments inside documents [15]3.
On the other hand, the adoption and development of standards for regal information, electronic court filing, court documents, transcripts, criminal justice information systems, etc., is currently the central activity of a number of initiatives and projects. To cite a few examples, the non-profit OASIS Legal- XML (a subgroup within OASIS) was established in 1998 to develop “an open, non-proprietary technical standard for structuring legal documents and information using XML and related technologies” (LegalXML 2007). LegalXML’s technical committees are active in areas such as court filings, electronic contracts, electronic notarization, international justice, lawful interception, legislative documents, and online dispute resolution. In Europe, the LEXML community defines itself as “a European network exploring the automatic exchange of legal information. The development of European standards involves learning lessons from previous national projects such as Norme in Rete (Italy), Metalex (Netherlands), LexDania (Denmark), CHeXML (Switzerland), and eLaw (Austria).4

Technology is one of the main concerns of national and European courts, but the extent of its application to court administration and adjudication shows that there is a great variety of solutions.5 Richard Susskind, for example, describes the following. Richard Susskind describes, for example: (i) management information systems to help monitor court throughput and performance; (ii) case management systems to support and automate the administrative work of court staff; (iii) jury case management, including case tracking, case planning, telephone and video conferencing, and document management, for direct use by judges; (iv) case management; (v) non-judicial case management, to assist court staff in advancing the many cases that are not judicially processed [20]….
In 2001, M. Fabri and F. Contini proposed three cycles of ICT applications to the judiciary. (i) an exploratory cycle, (ii) the establishment of a governance structure, and (iii) evaluation and e-justice. The path towards virtual courts and e-justice holds a lot of promise. E-justice can be defined as “the exploration and exploitation of the possibilities of integration between the entire judicial process and the web” [21]. However, as many scholars have pointed out, due to the diversity of the legal culture and the complexity of the organizational and judicial tasks, the promise is only half fulfilled [22,23]. This point of view was recently supported by a more recent comparative study6 . Technology by itself does not guarantee better organizational or sentencing results in a judicial environment, it still constitutes a challenge for the governance of European legal systems.
However, we believe that this is precisely the reason why advanced research on artificial intelligence and law is so important. Only with the advent and full development of the Semantic Web, well-developed ontologies, dialectical systems for legal reasoning, and a better understanding of the possibilities offered by the implementation of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), can we begin to understand the organizational constraints, the complexity of legal decision-making, and the it will be possible to bridge the gap between the implementation of web services.
Furthermore, as several projects described below show (Section 4), synergies between courts and other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR-ODR) instruments as well as the user-based orientation of computational models may contribute to an improved and easier access of citizens to justice.

As mentioned in the introduction, the research developed in the European project combines the development of effective technologies for legal practice with the definition of computable models for representing legal knowledge. Some of these models have already been converted into widely available tools for legal practice (as described above), others have so far led to only a few applications and are not yet available to the majority of potential users, and finally, some are still in the research phase Some of them are still in the research stage. Legal knowledge may be encoded in a variety of natural and artificial languages and contained in multiple formats (text, audio, video, graphics, etc.). It can be developed, shared, and communicated in a variety of ways by individuals, professional groups, corporations, political organizations, companies, or the general public. In order to develop advanced ICT applications for the legal domain, it is necessary to understand legal knowledge in context, and to represent some of this knowledge so that it can be used in computer systems. This requires interdisciplinary cooperation among various types of scientific and technical experts (lawyers, judges, jurists, social scientists, organizational scientists, legal theorists, computer scientists, and engineers). In the following pages, we will only mention some of the aspects addressed by these models.

The computable representation of legal documents has been addressed since the sixties, when the first electronic systems for legal documents were developed (see [26]). However, in the last few years, the advent of the Internet, and in particular the Semantic Web, has brought about a real revolution. The old debate about distinguishing between fixed fields and free text and indexing legal materials in various ways has been replaced by a debate about how to structure legal documents according to shared standards and how to enrich textual information with different kinds of metadata, perhaps organized according to logic (see [27]). These metadata should not only facilitate access to the text, but also enable sophisticated manipulations of the text, such as providing access to point-in-time legislation. In addition, metadata can be extended to include the representation of norms and concepts, providing links to further levels in the representation of legal knowledge. Thus, there is a strong interrelationship between scientific inquiry into the study of legal documents and practice, the development of legal information systems, and the management of legal workflows, e.g., the development of XML-based models employed in legislative and judicial processes (DALOS, SEAL).

There is also a considerable history of computable representations of legal norms, with the first attempts dating back to the early seventies, and considerable breakthroughs in the eighties with the use of logic programming (see [28]). More recently, a considerable amount of new research has been accomplished, including the development of rule-based systems, the definition of logic as a defeasible rule for legal norms, models of the dynamics of normative systems, and models of the use of norms in legal arguments (see [29]). These developments not only support new applications in the legal domain, but also give much needed impetus to innovations in legal theory and legal logic [30]. In recent years, research on the modeling of legal norms has merged with research on the interaction of autonomous agents. The problem of norm-based governance of autonomous agents is a challenging research area where the different fields of law, legal theory, cognitive psychology, and computing can combine their efforts [31]. The projects presented in this book take these developments into account while making important contributions to them (ESTRELLA, ALIS, ARGUGRID). These projects, which also involve companies active in legal knowledge base systems, show how the computerized application of legal rules is penetrating legal practice (especially in public administration), but much effort is still needed to bridge the gap between academic research and applications for legal professionals.

Computable modeling of legal concepts emerged from the framework of legal databases, especially in the sixties and seventies, when great efforts were made in indexing techniques based on conceptual relations (thesauri, structured keywords, etc.). This research area was partially neglected for a few years, but since the 90’s, with the advent of the Internet and the need to provide conceptual schemas that allow access and integration of heterogeneous resources, there has been a renewed interest in this area. In recent years, a lot of effort has been devoted to the development of legal ontologies (machine-processable representations of legal concepts), which are expected to be able to be used as frameworks shared by multiple users [32]. For this purpose, various approaches have been used, from (automatic) linguistic analysis of legal documents, from analysis of legal practice, or from available conceptual structures in legal doctrine and legal theory (see [33]). Different models have also been adopted for the integration of specific legal concept resources with general concept resources, the integration of legal ontologies with top-level general ontologies, and the connection of legal concepts with common sense concepts or concepts from other specific fields (DALOS, ESTRELLA , METASEARCH, SEKT). Technologies for managing legal concepts are already in use in many applications (document management, electronic learning, etc.).

Fundamental aspects of legal knowledge are represented by precedents, and in particular by case law. Research on computable representation of precedents has already started in the framework of artificial intelligence research in the US in the 70s. On the one hand, it is related to the problem of logical representation of norms and legal arguments (ESTRELLA), and on the other hand, to the problem of enriching the record of precedents with machine-processable metadata (CASELEX).

Traditionally, the representation of law has been aimed at representing normative information. Recently, however, there has been a move to model human interactions based on law as well. In this regard, we can distinguish different lines of research. One deals with the modeling of legal dialogues, i.e., discussion-based interactions where legal issues are dealt with in different contexts (see [34], [35]). Here, the focus is on dialectical protocols that establish what argumentative moves are allowed for each party and when and with what consequences the dialogue should end (ESTRELLA). Although theoretical models of legal dialogues do not easily fit into actual dialogues or systems that effectively manage such dialogues [36], they are already inspiring systems for OCR. A different but complementary approach is to focus on the interests and motivations of the parties and to consider what actions they might reasonably take toward each other, taking into account not only their interests but also their expectations about the behavior of the other party (BEST). This leads to the use of game theory in the modeling of legal interactions (ALIS). Finally, information about legal interactions also includes a broader sociological analysis of legal problem solving in social settings (SEKT).

This book does not cover all European and EU projects on legal technology and computable legal models, but it provides an important sample of them, illustrates some of the results obtained so far, and points to promising research directions. In the following pages, each project is briefly introduced along with its main objectives.7

ALIS – Automated Legal Intelligent System
ALIS is a STREP project funded by the 6th Framework of the European Commission. The consortium coordinator is ORT France (Dr. Michel Rudi- anski), and the project partners are: Imperial College London, Sineura SPA, Atos Origin SA, CBKE (Research Centre for Legal and Economical Aspects of Electronic Communication), S (Research Centre for Legal and Economical Aspects of Electronic Communication), SIVECO Romania SA, Exalead SA, Technical University of Darmstadt, Alma Consulting Group, CIRSFID (University of Bologna) and Gesica Paris Friedland law firm8.
ALIS aims to reduce the distance between citizens and businesses and the legal system (regulations) and facilitate their access and use. ALIS aims to reduce the distance between citizens and businesses and the legal system (regulations) and facilitate their access and use. ALIS aims to reduce the distance between citizens and businesses and the legal system (regulations) and facilitate their access and use. Care will be taken to develop a system that is comprehensive (open to citizens, businesses, and industry), pan-European (open and available throughout the EU), time- and cost-efficient, ergonomic, and intelligent (capable of reasoning in a way that suits both the user and the case under consideration).
ALIS aims to facilitate the easy management of legal knowledge in order to promote compliance with existing laws and governmental regulations on conduct, to prevent disputes wherever possible, to suggest alternative dispute resolution methods, and to facilitate the development and evolution of a coherent legal and regulatory system. To this end, ALIS is looking to combine the latest research results in theory, artificial intelligence, and Law & Regulation Corpus Structuring Se- mantics to build an efficient modeling tool.

ARGUGRID – Argumentation as a Foundation for Semantic Grids
The coordinator of this project is the Department of Computing, Imperial College London (Dr. Francesca Toni) and the other members of the consortium are: ARGUGRID is a STREP project of the EC’s 6th Framework9 .
The project aims to influence the field of Grid research through new models, architectures and platforms, and to influence business and business practices by enhancing Grid-enabled business applications where there are multiple service providers and requesters The purpose of this project is to And while the focus is on e-business application scenarios, the results extend to all kinds of applications. argugrid aims to make two new contributions to grid computing.
To define an overall architecture for the interface between service-oriented workflows and argumentative agent technology through the definition of semantic descriptors of workflows and the development of tools to map the results of agent negotiation and planning phases into executable workflows.
To develop a grid-based platform that enables the formation of virtual organizations for agent communication and interaction. To use peer-to-peer and overlay network technologies and standardized communication protocols.

ASPIC – Argumentation Services Platform with Integrated Components
ASPIC is a STREP project funded by the 6th Framework of the European Commission. The scientific coordination of the project is provided by Cancer Re- search UK (Prof. John Fox). The consortium consists of the following members: Singular Logic S.A. (Greece), Zeus Consulting S.A. (Germany), Singular Logic S.A. (Greece), University of Ljubljana (AI Laboratory, Slovenia), Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Knowledge Engineering and Machine Learning Group, KEMLg, Spain), Toulouse Institute of Informatics (Université Paul Sabatier, France), University of Liverpool (School of Computer Science, UK), Utrecht University (Intelligent Systems Group, Institute of Information and Computer Science, The Netherlands) and City University (USA)10 .
ASPIC focuses on knowledge-based services for the information society, based on a semantically rich logical form called argumentation systems. ASPIC focuses on knowledge-based services for the information society, based on a semantically rich logical form called argumentation systems. ASPIC focuses on knowledge-based services for the information society, based on a semantically rich logical form called argumentation systems. Initially, ASPIC will develop a common framework to support the services that are emerging as core features of the argumentation paradigm. These will include reasoning, decision making, learning, and communication. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide a set of software components based on this framework and to develop a platform for integrating these components with knowledge (e.g. Semantic Web) resources and legacy systems. The consortium includes partners with experience in using argumentation systems in eHealth, eCommerce, and eGovernment applications. These domains provide a practical domain for testing and validating technology components.

BEST – Establishing BATNA using Semantic Web Technologies
The BEST project is carried out by the Institute of Computer/Legal Studies (Dr. Arno Lod-der) and the Department of AI at the Free University of Amsterdam, and funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The project is part of the ToKeN research program, an interdisciplinary program in which cognitive science and computer science focus on fundamental issues related to the interaction between human users and knowledge and information systems11.
The goal of the BEST project is to provide information on negotiating positions to laypeople who wish to better understand the legal aspects of disputes over damages. Knowledge of the expected outcome of a trial, the rationale for out-of-court settlements, and the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) will provide the public with an opportunity to determine the extent of the room for negotiation in resolving damages and to choose a dispute resolution method other than litigation. This information will be available on the Semantic Web. This information could be provided through the intelligent disclosure of existing precedents using Semantic Web technologies. An ontology-based search and navigation would list precedents that are relevant to the current situation.

DALOS – Ontology-Based Legislative Drafting Support
DALOS is an e-Participation project funded by the EC under the e-Participation Preparatory Action launched on January 1, 2007. DALOS aims to provide law drafters with enhanced language and knowledge management tools, since consistency and coherence of legislative terminology can contribute to the quality and clarity of legislative texts produced in the EU. Thus, law drafters and decision makers will be able to control the multilingual language of European legislation and the language and conceptual issues related to the transposition of that legislation, contributing to harmonization and consistency of legislative texts. The project will use the results and ontology terminology resources developed in the LOIS project. Thus, legislative planners can consult the language and ontology terminology resource to find appropriate and standardized terms for specific legal concepts. This resource is available through a standard interface and can be upgraded by using T2K (Text-2-Knowledge, a logic learning tool) and GATE for advanced linguistic analysis, data visualization, and information sharing in different languages. Multilingual language ontology resources will be integrated into and accessible through xmLegesEd-itor, a legislative drafting environment that can implement legislative XML standards. The coordinator of this e-Participation project is the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques, ITTIG (Dr. Daniela Tiscornia) and the other partners are . The other partners are: University of Leiden (UNI-Leiden), European University Institute (EUI), CELI, Leibniz Law Center (UvA), and Camera dei Deptati (Italy). 12
DALOS will collaborate with other eParticipation projects to avoid duplication of testing activities, to provide access to vocabulary resources within other pilot editors developed (SEAL), and to share dissemination and use processes (SEAL, LEXIS).

ESTRELLA – European Project for a Standardized Transparent Representation to Extend LegaL Accessibility
ESTRELLA is a STREP project funded by the EC’s 6th Framework. the main technical goal of the ESTRELLA project is to develop a standardized transparent representation of the Le-gal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF), based on the new XML-based standards for the Semantic Web such as RDF and OWL, and an application programmer interface for interacting with legal knowledge-based systems. Interchange Format (LKIF) and to develop an application programmer interface (API) for interacting with legal knowledge-based systems. The coordinator of the consortium is the University of Amsterdam (Dr. Tom van Engers) and the other partners are the University of Liverpool, the University of Bologna (CIRSFID), Fraunhofer FOKUS and Rulewise B.V. Rule-Burst (EU- ROPE) Limited, KnowledgeTools International Gmbh. Limited, KnowledgeTools International Gmbh, Interaction Design Ltd, SOGEI (Societ`a Generale d’Informatica S.P.A.), CNIPA (Centro Nazionale per CNIPA (Centro Nazionale per l’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione), Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Ministryo dell’Economia e delle Finanze (Italy), Consorzio Pisa Ricerche SCARL13.The Netherlands, Bongtana, Inc. ESTRELLA offers a complete solution to improve both the quality and efficiency of administrative processes that require the application of complex regulations. ESTRELLA supports the integration of legal document management and legal knowledge-based systems to provide a complete solution that improves both the quality and efficiency of administrative processes that require the application of complex regulations.
The outcome of this project will facilitate the market for interoperable components for legal knowledge base systems, allowing public administrations and other users to freely choose between competing development environments, inference engines, and other tools. lkif format and the LKBS participating in the project Develop translators to and from vendors’ existing proprietary formats to achieve and demonstrate vendor neutrality and independence; model and use European and national (two European countries) tax-related legislation in pilot applications to demonstrate and validate the ESTRELLA platform. Free version translated by DeepL translation (www.DeepL.com/Translator).

OPENKNOWLEDGE
OpenKnowledge is a three-year project co-funded by the European Commission in the 6th Framework to develop a new form of open environment through 1) routing interaction models, 2) context maintenance, 3) dynamic ontology matching, and 4) visualization to The project aims to realize a new form of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing in open environments through 1) routing of interaction models, 2) context maintenance, 3) dynamic ontology matching, and 4) visualization. This project is based on the idea that the open World Wide Web has been successful on a global scale because of the cost of participation (at a basic level the cost is low, the individual benefits of participation are immediate and increase rapidly as the number of participants increases), and that the same cannot be said for systems based on semantics The same cannot be said for semantics-based systems. Therefore, OpenKnowledge focuses on interaction-related semantics that can be acquired at low cost (participation) and used in place of a priori semantic agreements.14 The coordinator of this project is the University of Edinburgh (Informatics, Dr. David Robertson). The partners are the Knowledge Media Institute (Open University), AI Vrije Uni-versiteit Amsterdam, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IIIA-CSIC), Electronics and Computer Science (University of Southampton), and the Department of Information and Communication Technology (Trent University). Trent University).
The areas of bioinformatics and emergency response have been the test beds for this research. The results so far include the definition of an interaction modeling language, working prototypes, the establishment of scenarios from the bioinformatics and emergency response fields, dynamic ontology mapping, and the creation of initial specifications for sufficient answers, reliability analysis, and visualization.

METASEARCH – Semantic Legal Metasearch Project
The METASEARCH project (“Research and development of a metasearch engine in legal semantics, clustering of results and automatic classification of legal sources”) is a Spanish PROFIT project funded by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. The consortium includes Wolters Kluwer Spain (coordinator), Institute of Law and Technology (IDT-UAB), and Intelligent Software Components, S.A. (iSOCO).15 This project complements and follows up on another PROFIT project – E-Sentencias [E-Rulings] – coordinated by iSOCO and with the same members as the former consortium (plus the participation of ETSE, the engineering school of UAB).16 This project is the first of its kind in the world.
This project aims to develop a complex and complete system for the retrieval, indexing, and automatic markup of legal documents in order to enable semantic search and retrieval by users. To enable semantic search, a legal ontology, specific relevance algorithms and a system for automatic markup and indexing will be used.

SEAL – Smart Environment for Legislative Drafting Support
The coordinator of the SEAL project is the Leibniz Law Center (Dr. Tom M. van Engers). The University of Bologna (CIRSFID), Le-gal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG), Be Informed, O&I Manage-ment Partners, and the Italian and Austrian Parliaments are the other partners in this project. The SEAL project aims to provide a supportive environment for those involved in the legislative process (law drafters) to enable them to draft laws through the use of drafting patterns and the creation of various connections to relevant existing legal sources. Repositories of existing laws, draft versions, and amendments are provided, along with easy-to-use access methods. Groupware functionality will support collaborative work.
Three parliaments are involved in the project, which aims to develop an integrated working environment for legislative drafters in both parliaments and ministries. seal is an open source WYSIWYG editor based on Vex and the Eclipse IDE, and is supported by MetaLex (MetaVex, the developed at the Leibniz Center for Law) is one of the three environments being evaluated. The other two environments are xmLegesEditor (owned, provided, and maintained by CNR-ITTIG) and Norma Editor (owned and maintained under license by CIRSFID University of Bologna).

SEKT- Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies
SEKT is a 36-month project co-funded by the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme, involving a large consortium of academic institutions and companies, bringing together Europe’s leading contributors to the development of knowledge technologies, data mining systems and natural language processing technologies. The SEKT consortium consists of the following members The SEKT consortium consists of the following members: British Telecommunications (John Davies, Project Coordinator), AIFB Institute (University of Karlsruhe, Rudi Studer, Technical Coor-dinator), Empolis GmbH, Jozef Stefan Institute, University of Sheffield, University of Innsbruck, Intelligent Software Components, S.A. (iSOCO), Ontoprise GmbH (Intelligente Lsungen fr das Wissensmanagement), Sirma AI Ltd, Silmar AI Ltd, Silmar AI, Inc, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Institute of Law and Technology (IDT-UAB) and Kea-pro GmbH18.
SEKT’s vision was to develop and leverage knowledge technologies to support the next generation of knowledge management and to integrate inputs from basic research, component development, and real-world case studies from the public and private sectors. The Siemens case study (Improving Individual Pro-ductivity), the British Telecom case study (Reducing Overheads of Knowledge Cre-ation and Maintenance), the Legal case study (Decision Support for Legal The objective of SEKT is to develop and leverage semantic-based knowledge technologies to support document, content, and knowledge management, and to provide users in three key areas: digital libraries, the engineering industry, and legal. The goal was to design appropriate utilities for users in three key areas: digital libraries, engineering industry, and legal, and to provide rapid access to relevant information. Ontologies, a key technology of the Semantic Web, were developed in each of these areas.
The legal case studies (IDT-UAB and iSOCO) focused on the improvement of Iuriservice, a web-based intelligent FAQ support system for judges. Judges at the Judicial Training Institute can enter questions into this system in natural language and access a database of experience-based answers (organized as question-answer pairs) to everyday practical questions. The search system is enhanced using ontologies and semantic distance computation. Members of the consortium provided: 1) methodological support for ontology construction (AIFB Institute), 2) ontology learning tools (Text2Onto from AIFB Institute, OntoGen from Jozef Stefan Institute), 3) upper-level ontology references (Sirma AI Ltd. .), 4) display of search results (Text2Onto, OntoGen, and Jozef Stefan Institute’s Text2Onto.) ), 4) consistency checking and multi-version reasoning (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), 5) ontology consistency support (University of Innsbruck), 6) user needs, benchmarking, usability and business benefits (Kea-pro GmbH), and 7) the use of the general architecture GATE for text mining (University of Sheffield).

The contents of the volume are divided into five parts. The main topics are roughly as follows. (i) XML legislative drafting tools and methods; (ii) legal ontologies and system capabilities (e.g., information retrieval); (iii) argumentation and legal reasoning; (iv) norms and electronic (or virtual) institutions; and (v) online dispute resolution and justice. This division is not absolute. Strictly speaking, topics such as, for example, knowledge representation and legal ontologies are present in all sections. The distribution of the paper is just a suggestion for readability, derived from Legal XML. They are briefly summarized below.

I Knowledge Representation, Ontologies and XML Legislative Drafting

The first two contributions provide an overview of MetaLex XML and LKIF formats and MetaVex tools. LKIF, which aims to impose a standardized view on data about the process of publishing legal information, and LKIF, which is a legal representation language consisting of a reusable and extensible core ontology that enables reasoning along with an exchange format for legal knowledge representation languages. Next, S. van de Ven, R. Hoekstra, R. Winkels, E. de Maat, and A. Kollar will present MetaVex (VEX stands for “Visual Editor for XML”), a MetaLex regulatory drafting environment for legislative drafters and parliamentarians to facilitate the legislative process and MetaVex (VEX stands for “Visual Editor for XML”) is described as an independent open source editor for legislative drafters and parliamentarians to facilitate the legislative process and support the creation of MetaLex standards-compliant documents (but adaptable to different XML schemas).
In the DALOS project, E. Francesconi and D. Tiscornia outline the design of the ontology and language resource under development and the methodology for its construction. the DALOS resource is based on the LOIS database (35,000 concepts in five European languages, the one of the most extensive lexical resources currently available in the legal field). The main goal is directed towards improving the quality of legislative drafts.
The last contribution in this section, by J.A. de Oliveira Lima, M. Palmirani and F. Vitali, presents an application of the FRBRoo document model to define an information ontology of legal resources considering the time dimension in the ESTRELLA project. FRBRER is an entity-relationship model for the organization of bibliographic records, and FRBRoo is a new version that uses an object-oriented approach. The model can be applied to legal resources and the inclusion of the time dimension allows for more accurate modeling within the workflow of the legislative process.