There is more to legal knowledge representation than knowledge-bases. It is valuable to look at legal knowledge representation and its implementation across the entire domain of computerisation of law, rather than focussing on sub-domains such as legal expert systems. The DataLex WorkStation software and applications developed using it are used to provide examples. Effective integration of inferencing, hypertext and text retrieval can overcome some of the limitations of these current paradigms of legal computerisation which are apparent when they are used (...) on a stand-alone basis. Effective integration of inferencing systems is facilitated by use of a (quasi) natural language knowledge representation, and the benefits of isomorphism are enhanced. These advantages of integration apply to all forms of inferencing, including document generation and casebased inferencing. Some principles for development of integrated legal decision support systems are proposed. (shrink)

Legal contracts and litigation documents common to the American legal system were encoded in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML also represents rules about the contracts and litigation procedure. In addition to an expert system tool that allows one to make inferences with that engine, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) generates the XML representing the rules. A rulebase is developed by marking up examples of the XML to be interpreted and the XML to be generated, analogously to Query By Example. (...) This article provides a broader context of the synergy between XML and artificial intelligence by including discussions of: (1) the role of Artificial Intelligence in handling routine litigation; (2) how the use of XML enables legal expert systems to get their `input' without the user having to enter the same information again for the expert system;(3) the advantages of XML markup over other forms of markup for documents; (4) the relationship between XML and ontologies; (5) other projects using XML with rules or legal affairs. (shrink)

The paper outlines ongoing research on logic-based tools for the analysis and representation of legal contracts, of the kind frequently encountered in large-scale engineering projects and complex, long-term trading agreements. We consider both contract formation and contract performance, in each case identifying the representational issues and the prospects for providing automated support tools.

The first issue of _Artificial Intelligence and Law_ journal was published in 1992. This paper discusses several topics that relate more naturally to groups of papers than a single paper published in the journal: ontologies, reasoning about evidence, the various contributions of Douglas Walton, and the practical application of the techniques of AI and Law.