Computer-Assisted Legal Research—An Analysis of Full-Text Document Retrieval Systems, Particularly the LEXIS System

Author:

Sprowl James A.

Abstract

Computerized document retrieval systems are now a commercial reality; they enable attorneys and other researchers to search quickly through large collections of judicial decisions and statutes for those containing words pertinent to their inquiries. While these systems can free the researcher from the constraints of formal indexing, they leave him enslaved to a different master-word usage in the documents through which he is searching With these new systems, the retrievability of a document is determined by its word content, and that in turn is determined by the vocabulary and stylistic habits of the document's author. Thus, judges and other document authors unwittingly serve as the indexers of these systems.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Reference109 articles.

1. In the JURIS system, the searcher may first have the main headings in an outline of some subject displayed. He may then have the subheadings under any desired main heading displayed. Sub-subheadings under any subheading may also be displayed and so on. Finally, the searcher may select an indexing term that appears opposite a sub-subheading. Using this indexing term, the searcher may have all documents retrieved to which the term has been assigned by an indexer. In the JURIS system, the outlines are all taken from portions of the West topical index, with West's permission, and the indexing terms are West key numbers which have been incorporated into the stored documents. B. W. Basheer, JURIS: Justice Retrieval and Inquiry System, in Automated Law Research, supra note 3, at 60–61.

2. See pp. 211–12 supra.

3. See p. 197, supra.

4. Reed C. Lawlor, Amplification Factor of an Information Retrieval System, 15 Jurimetrics J. 289, 301 (1975).

5. There is one important advantage that a computer possesses over a library for intelligence amplification. This is in the area of fact retrieval. Few library systems are indexed for facts except in a limited way. A computer has the advantage that it is capable of storing the full texts of the cases, so that cases dealing with facts represented by descriptive words familiar to the user can be retrieved readily with a computer system but only slowly with a library indexing system. Consequently, in the fact retrieval area, the amplification factor of a man-computer team is much higher than average.

Cited by 5 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

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2. Online access AIDS for documentation;ACM SIGIR Forum;1985-09

3. The organization and use of information: Contributions of information science, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence;Journal of the American Society for Information Science;1981-09

4. Answer-passage retrieval by text searching;Journal of the American Society for Information Science;1980-08

5. Hardware for searching very large text databases;ACM SIGIR Forum;1980-04-30

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