Patent Application
20060229999
The present invention relates to a decision support system, and more particularly, is directed to a system for supporting evaluation of a case for litigation.
JustSys, an Australian company, has developed a program called GetAid that is used by Victoria Legal Aid to assess applicants for legal aid. The assessment involves evaluating the client's financial status and the likelihood that her case will succeed. GetAid cannot reject applicants, but can only approve them; the unapproved applicants are referred to a legal officer for reconsideration. A benefit of this system is that it enables lawyers to spend more of their time representing people rather than processing applications.
GetAid looks back through past cases and draws inferences from them about whether the client has a winnable case. GetAid uses expert system and machine learning in which a system is “tuned” using historical examples to adjust a model so that it produces the correct answer.
However, there is still room to improve the processing associated with a legal case.
In accordance with an aspect of this invention, there are provided a method of and a system for deciding how to process a pre-litigation case. Information about the case is received from a claimant. A case score is determined based on the received information, and compared with a predefined threshold. Further processing for the case is selected based on the comparison.
According to a further aspect of the invention, the case score is based on a liability score and a damages score, each of which may be computed as a weighted average. The further processing may be determining what additional information should be collected from the claimant and adjusting the case score based on the additional information collected from the claimant; determining what documents should be collected from the claimant and adjusting the case score based on the documents collected from the claimant; interviewing the claimant and adjusting the case score based on the interview with the claimant; rejecting the case, referring the case to an outside attorney; or accepting the case.
According to a further aspect of the invention, the received information includes a case type, and documents are prepared based on the received information and predetermined information associated with the case type. The prepared documents may include a Complaint, a discovery request, or a budget and schedule for the case.
It is not intended that the invention be summarized here in its entirety. Rather, further features, aspects and advantages of the invention are set forth in or are apparent from the following description and drawings.
FIGS. 2 is a flowchart depicting set-up of case evaluation system 72;
As used herein, “case” means a pre-litigation matter submitted by a claimant for evaluation.
As used herein, “referred to an outside attorney” means “recommended to an outside attorney”.
An attorney typically conducts an in-person interview with a potential litigation client. During the interview, the attorney gathers facts relating to the case and assesses the potential client to determine whether they can work together. Often, an attorney will require evidence such as documents prior to deciding whether to take a case. The attorney's decision is based on objective factors such as amount of damages and the nature of the case, as well as subjective factors such as how strong the case is and whether the client will be a good client and/or witness.
A lawsuit is formally initiated by filing a Complaint in a state or federal court. Most cases involve doing a substantial amount of work prior to filing a Complaint, that is, formally initiating a lawsuit. Much of this work is administrative in nature, such as collecting documents, identifying the facts, potential witnesses, dates and so on. Usually, the administrative work is a prerequisite to the legal analysis, as the analysis is tailored to the facts.
The above-described conventional process for deciding whether to take a case is inefficient for several reasons. First, much of the work is administrative, and it is wasteful of the lawyer's time to have a lawyer doing the administrative work. Second, the attorney might not uncover a factor that makes the case undesirable until having spent considerable time gathering facts, witnesses and researching the basic legal issues, and determining the general value of the case; this, too, is wasteful of the lawyer's time. Third, the decision is highly unstructured, being based on a vaguely-defined or undefined combination of subjective and objective factors.
The present invention provides a process, practiced by an automated system, for gathering information, scoring cases based on their chances of success as to liability and potential damage awards, and automatically preparing papers based on the gathered information. The process may also incorporate legal research. A system according to the present invention functions as a management and decision support tool for pre-litigation activities.
A brief overall description of the system will now be provided, followed by a detailed description of various embodiments of the system.
The system is operative on at least one general purpose computer, and accessed through user terminals connected either locally or via a network. A claimant terminal provides an interface that collects information from a potential client. An administrative terminal provides an interface for an administrator to administer cases submitted by claimants. A referral receiving terminal enables a third party attorney, that is, an outside attorney not affiliated with the operator of the system, to receive cases referred from the system.
Case descriptive information includes liability elements and remedy elements.
Liability elements are factors relating to (i) whether the claimant has established a situation fitting within a predefined legal cause of action, and (ii) whether the defendant has any defenses that enable avoidance of a remedy award.
Remedy elements include damages, injunctions and other remedies, such as destruction of counterfeit items. For brevity, only damages elements will be further discussed. It will be appreciated that the other remedy elements are analyzed similarly.
Damages elements are factors relating to the amount of damages that can be claimed. Depending on the cause of action, the following types of damages may be available: actual, consequential, punitive and/or statutory; additionally, in some cases, attorney's fees are awarded and these are included in the damages analysis. Actual damages can be economic such as loss of business, non-economic such as for pain and suffering, and may encompass past, present and/or future losses.
In a first operational phase referred to as “L1”, the claimant enters liability and damages information about his or her case, and the system computes a first score. The L1 evaluation is completely objective. If the score is below a first threshold, the case is automatically rejected, and a rejection letter is automatically prepared and sent to the claimant.
The score is computed as follows: each of the liability and damages elements is given a weighting, such as a number from 1 to 100. The claimant's information is translated to a score in a range, such as −5 to +5; lack of information corresponds to a 0. Each individual score is multiplied by the appropriate weight, and the weighted individual scores are summed to produce an overall score. The actual details of the scoring procedure are not crucial, the important feature is that individual bits of information are combined in a way that emphasizes important information. Substantial expertise is required to set the scores and weights correctly; the setting may be done by a human, or by a computer based on abstraction from a large number of examples, or by a combination of human and computer interaction.
If the score is high enough, processing proceeds to a second operational phase, referred to as “L2”, in which key documents are collected and administratively verified. In some cases, a junior attorney provides a basic evaluation by inputting altered or additional data. The L2 evaluation is objective and may also be subjective. The system then computes a second score. If the score is below a second threshold, the case is referred to a third party attorney, that is, an outside attorney.
If the score is above the second threshold, processing proceeds to a third operational phase, referred to as “L3”, in which the claimant is interviewed by a senior attorney, and any information gaps are filled or noted. The senior attorney provides an evaluation of the claimant and the gathered facts by inputting altered or additional data. The L3 evaluation is objective and subjective. The system then computes a third score. If the score is below a third threshold, the case is referred to a third party attorney, that is, an outside attorney.
If the score is above the third threshold, the case is accepted for further consideration.
Prior to the system's referring a case to an outside attorney in the second or third operational phases, or accepting the case in the third operational phase, the system generates a case summary comprising an analysis and evaluation, prepares case template papers and generates an activity record for the case. In most instances, the case summary and case template papers are forwarded to the outside attorney.
The present process for deciding whether to take a case is efficient in several ways. First, there is a process for collecting objective facts and eliminating cases with undesirable fact patterns; thus, only cases lacking bad facts—and having at least some good facts—are brought to an attorney's attention. Second, most of the administrative work is performed by the system, saving a lot of expensive lawyer time. Third, the process is structured, facilitating comparison of cases submitted to the system; this is particularly important when there are more cases than can be accepted and/or managed. That is, when only a small number of cases can be accepted due to resource constraints, it is desirable to be able to efficiently select the best of the presented cases for acceptance by weeding out cases with undesirable facts, then combining an objective evaluation of the case with a subjective evaluation to present, in priority order, the most desirable cases.
A comparison of the prior art GetAid system with the present invention is shown in Table 1.
Turning to
Case evaluation system 72 includes web server 25 coupled to Internet 10. Web server 25 functions as a communications interface. Web server 25 has storage 30 for holding the programming and graphics for interacting with a claimant. Web server 25 is also coupled to firewall 35, which in turn is coupled to case server 40. Case server 40 has storage 45 for holding (i) the data related to cases, (ii) the programming for evaluating and managing the cases, and (iii) the programming for interacting with a local case administrator and local attorneys. Firewall 35 serves to isolate case server 40 and its information from access by unauthorized parties. Administrative terminal 20 is coupled to case server 40.
Each of claimant terminal 5, referral receiving terminal 15 and administrative terminal 20 is a general purpose personal computer programmed to operate with case evaluation system 72; generally, this means the terminals execute browser software operational with hypertext transfer protocol (http) to send and receive information. In other embodiments, a protocol other than http is employed.
Each of web server 25, firewall 35 and case server 40 is at least one general-purpose computer including a processor programmed according to the present invention. If more than one general-purpose computer is provided, the computers are connected in a suitable network.
Each of storage 30 and storage 45 is at least one general-purpose data storage device, and may be magnetic, optical, magneto-optical or any other technology suitable for providing appropriate read/write access to the stored information. If a plurality of data storage devices are provided as either storage 30 or storage 45, they are networked in suitable manner.
At step 105, personal descriptive information and questions are defined. For example, “claimant name” is one instance of personal descriptive information, and “What is your name” is an instance of a question for personal descriptive information. Table 2 provides representative questions for personal descriptive information. It will be appreciated that the questions are structured as a tree, wherein the branches provide more detail. For example, question (3)(g)(ii) is a third tree-level question.
At step 110, case types are defined. Table 3 provides representative case types.
At step 115, for each case type, case descriptive information and questions are defined. Table 4 provides representative questions for case descriptive information for defamation. In one embodiment, the questions are created manually. In other embodiments, the elements are created and updated by a computer program, as described below. In this embodiment, the law is determined in advance of receiving a case. In other embodiments, the law is determined when the case is received, as described below. In yet other embodiments, the basic law is determined in advance, and details are determined when the facts of the case are received.
At step 120, for each case type, a directory of expert witnesses is created, a directory of consulting attorneys is created, and a directory of referral receiving attorneys is created. In one embodiment, the directory is created manually. In other embodiments, the directory is created automatically, such as by extracting names of experts from reported legal decisions, or by automatically searching the Internet for parties of appropriate expertise.
At step 125, the L1, L2, L3 scoring procedures are defined. Generally, the score is computed as follows: each of the liability and damages elements is given a weighting, such as a number from 1 to 100. The claimant's information is translated to a score in a range, such as −5 to +5; no information maps to a 0. Each individual score is multiplied by the appropriate weight, and the weighted individual scores are summed to produce an overall score. In other embodiments, other scoring procedures are used.
At step 130, the scoring thresholds for L1, L2 and L3 are defined. Generally, the L1 threshold is set so as to eliminate cases with major flaws, such as insufficient time to prepare the case, an adverse party that cannot pay and so on. The L2 and L3 thresholds are set to provide a number of cases that generally corresponds with the staff available to investigate the cases. In other embodiments, the thresholds are set differently.
Turning to
At step 405, system 72 obtains the case type, in similar manner as it obtained the personal descriptive information. System 72 uses the case type to select which case descriptive questions to present to the claimant.
At step 410, system 72 obtains case descriptive information. Generally, this information is obtained by web server 25 presenting questions to claimant terminal 5, and receiving responses to the questions from claimant terminal 5. It will be recalled that the case descriptive questions were defined at step 115 of
At step 415, system 72 generates an L1 score, as shown in
Generally, the score for a level Ln, n=1,2 or 3, is given as the sum of the liability score and the damages score for the level. Each of the liability and damages scores is determined by assigning a score to the elements and multiplying the score by a weight for that element. In some embodiments, the liability and damages scores are combined in a different manner to give an overall score.
In
Ln liability=Σi(weight for liability element i)*(score for liability element i)
At step 605, the damages score for level Ln is generated, n=1, 2 or 3:
Ln damages=Σj(weight for damages element j)*(score for damages element j)
At step 610, the liability and damages scores for this level are combined to give the overall score for this level:
Ln=Ln liability+Ln damages
Table 5 provides an example of a predefined scoring structure having a single liability element, deadline, and a single damage element, financial damages, to be combined.
As an illustration, let it be assumed that a particular case has a deadline for filing the complaint in 7 months, corresponding to an element score of −2, and has financial damages of $200,000, corresponding to an element score of 2. The overall score for this level is
example level score=50*(−2)+100(2)=100
Returning to
If the case score is below the L1 threshold, processing proceeds to step 425, where system 72 generates a rejection letter and presents the rejection letter to the claimant. Generally, this occurs by presenting the letter via claimant terminal 5; in some embodiments, a paper letter or an e-mail letter is sent to the claimant. If the case score is above the L1 threshold, processing proceeds to the second phase.
A second operational phase will now be described.
In the second operational phase, referred to as “L2”, key documents are collected and administratively verified. In some cases, a junior attorney provides a basic evaluation. The system then computes a second score. If the score is below a second threshold, the case is referred to a third party attorney.
At step 430, case evaluation system 72 gets key documents for the case.
In a manual embodiment, a human reviews the information submitted at L1, decides which documents should be reviewed, and requests the documents from the claimant such as by entering a document request via administrative terminal 0, which converts the document request to an e-mail message, and sends the e-mail message to claimant terminal 5 via case server 40, firewall 35 and web server 25.
In an automated embodiment, system 72 has a list of which documents should be provided for each case type, and presents this list to claimant terminal 5.
The claimant can submit the documents in one or more ways, such as by mailing the documents to system 72 for scanning by an administrator, scanning the documents and attaching a file of the scanned documents to an e-mail to system 72, uploading a file of the scanned documents to system 72 and so on. System 72 places an electronic file corresponding to the received documents in storage 45, associated with the claimant's case.
A human administrator or junior attorney next reviews the documents. The human checks that the document contents match the information that the claimant has provided. The human may optionally generate more questions for the claimant and send these questions to the claimant, typically via an email or by a web-interface that requires the claimant to enter the information using an http protocol or the like, or via paper mail; if so, the human manually scores the responses and enters the scores for these elements to system 72 as either adjustments to existing element scores or as new element scores. The human provides subjective scores relating to the strength of the claimant's liability and damages issues.
At step 435, system 72 receives the human's L2 evaluation, comprising objective and possibly subjective liability and damages scores, and optionally new scores for information responsive to additional questions presented to the claimant.
At step 440, system 72 generates an L2 score in similar manner as used to generate an L1 score.
Turning to
If the case score is below the L1 threshold, processing proceeds to step 425, where system 72 generates a rejection letter and presents the rejection letter to the claimant.
If the case score is above the L1 threshold and below the L2 threshold, processing proceeds to step 505.
If the case score is above the L2 threshold, processing proceeds to the third phase.
At step 505, system 72 generates an external case summary, which is basically a narrative description of what has occurred so far.
At step 510, system 72 generates case template papers, as shown in detail in
Turning to
In some embodiments, the schedule times are determined by computation, rather than table look-up. For example, the discovery time can be a function of the estimated number of documents and estimated number of parties and witnesses to be deposed.
At step 705, the case budget is generated. In one embodiment, the budget is obtained by simple table look-up. Specifically, system 72 decides whether a case is “simple”, “average” or “complex” based upon various factors as discussed above. Table 7 shows an example of the look-up table of case budgets.
At step 710, a draft Complaint and Legal Memorandum are generated for the case.
The Complaint is a formal document having parts as shown in Table 8. System 72 obtains the information for the Complaint parts as generally indicated in Table 8.
The Legal Memorandum is a formal document that repeats the case facts, then presents the law relating to the case facts, and explains why the facts fit into the law leading to a desired result, and distinguishes the facts from law leading to an undesired result. Generally, the Legal Memorandum must be prepared by an attorney. However, system 72 provides a template including predefined paragraphs of the law based on the type of case selected and the location where the subject of the Complaint occurred.
At step 715, draft discovery requests are generated. As specified in federal and state Rules of Civil Procedure, discovery requests include Interrogatories, Document Requests and Admission Requests. For system 72, discovery requests generally also include Deposition Notices and topics are generated for the various parties and witnesses. See steps 800-815. Discovery requests are formal documents having parts as shown in Table 9. System 72 obtains the information for the discovery request parts as generally indicated in Table 9. Table 9's “example” column refers only to interrogatories, but comparable types of information are in the document requests and admissions requests.
A deposition notice is a formal paper that officially puts the other side of the litigation on notice that a deposition will be taken of a person. The parties to the case are always noticed for deposition. Anyone having material information about the case should be noticed for deposition. Of course, just because system 72 generates a deposition notice does not require the attorney handling the case to actually serve the deposition notice.
System 72 may generate a list of deposition topics for each deponent. The deposition topics for a deponent are generally (i) the facts that the deponent has personal knowledge of, (ii) case descriptive elements that are unknown by the claimant, and (iii) topics identified by the L2 or L3 attorney as associated with the deponent.
System 72 may generate draft jury instructions for the case. There are formbooks of jury instructions for various types of cases; system 72 selects pertinent paragraphs and provides them as draft jury instructions.
Returning to
Also at step 515, system 72 generates a full activity record, including the referral, when it was delivered and so on, and places the full activity record in storage 45. The full activity record serves as an audit trail for the case.
A third operational phase will now be described.
In the third operational phase, referred to as “L3”, the claimant is interviewed by a human, preferably a senior attorney. Information gaps are filled or noted. A subject matter expert and/or a consulting attorney may assist in evaluating the case. The senior attorney provides an evaluation of the claimant and the gathered facts. The system then computes a third score. If the score is below a third threshold, the case is referred to an outside attorney. If the score is above the third threshold, the case is accepted for further consideration.
At the start of the third operational phase, the claimant is required to sign an Agreement relating to processing of the case. In the L3 phase, it is often necessary to hire a subject matter expert and/or a consulting attorney to properly evaluate the case, and the claimant must agree to either pay for such evaluations, or agree to be compensate the operator of system 72 so that the evaluation fees can be recovered from the damages award or settlement of the case, if any.
At step 520 of
At step 525, system 72 schedules an interview between the claimant and a human representing the operator of system 72, preferably a senior attorney.
The L3 human administrator or senior attorney, and the claimant, participate in the interview, which is preferably an in-person interview. The human records and scores his/her perceptions of the claimant with regard to considerations such as being an easy-to-work with client, being a credible witness, being a sympathetic witness and so on.
The L3 human verifies the accuracy of the information submitted by the claimant, such as by confirming incorporation status of a company via third party databases.
The L3 human optionally does additional legal research for the case.
The L3 human hires experts as appropriate to give opinions on the case. For example, a subject matter expert such as an engineer is hired if complicated technology is involved. If an unusual area of law is implicated, such as admiralty, a consulting attorney is employed. In some cases, an investigator is employed to verify facts and/or obtain additional information.
At step 530, system 72 receives the human's L3 evaluation, comprising objective and subjective liability and damages scores, and a written report based on all the fact finding and legal research performed during the L3 information gathering.
At step 535, system 72 generates an L3 score, in the same manner as described above for the L2 and L1 scores.
At step 540, case evaluation system 72 compares the L3 scores to the L1 and L3 threshold.
If the case score is below the L1 threshold, processing proceeds to step 425, where system 72 generates a rejection letter and presents the rejection letter to the claimant.
If the case score is above the L1 threshold and below the L3 threshold, processing proceeds to step 545.
If the case score is equal to or above the L3 threshold, processing proceeds to step 560.
At step 545, system 72 generates an external case summary, which is basically a narrative description of what has occurred so far. At step 550, system 72 generates case template papers as described above. At step 555, system 72 generates a referral to one of the referral receiving attorneys in the directory established at step 120 of
At step 560, system 72 generates an internal case summary. An internal case summary is similar to an external case summary, but differs in that it includes working notes of the L2 and L3 attorneys participating in the evaluation.
At step 565, system 72 generates case template papers as generally discussed above.
At step 570, system 72 generates a full activity record, including the referral, when it was delivered and so on, and places the full activity record in storage 45.
An exemplary use case illustrating operation of case evaluation system 72 in the area of defamation will now be discussed.
Assume that selected liability elements are as shown in Table 10.
Assume that selected damages elements are as shown in Table 11.
Assume the following facts. Company ABC, the claimant, has a contract with Company X, the defendant, to lease equipment. Company X has $50 million in annual revenues. At the end of the contract, Company X claimed more money was due. Company ABC denied this. Company X reported Company ABC to a credit reporting agency as being a collection account for the amount claimed by Company X. As a consequence, Company ABC was unable to purchase or lease equipment on credit, and thus could not manufacture product for its existing customers causing a loss of $250,000 of business, or develop new business causing an estimated loss of $1.5 million. There are no non-economic damages.
The L1 liability and damages calculations are shown in Tables 12 and 13.
The L1 Score=L1 Liability Score+L1 Damages Score=800+550=1350. Assume that the L1 Score Reject Threshold=500. Here, the score is sufficiently high to move to L2.
At L2, the following documents are provided: 1. the underlying contract; 2. correspondence between the parties showing a dispute about the amount due; 3. the information disseminated, namely, a negative report about Company ABC from the credit agency; 4. letters from lenders refusing credit to Company ABC, stating that the poor credit report is why credit was denied; 5. a worksheet showing how present and future economic damages were computed; and 6. a financial statement for Company X showing its annual revenues.
The L2 attorney evaluates the documents, noticing that the contract requires an extra payment if Company ABC is late in returning the leased equipment to Company X, but Company ABC has proof that it timely delivered the leased equipment to Company X. The L2 attorney also notices that Company ABC had a prior poor credit history. Finally, the L2 attorney asks the claimant how much business it did with each of its customers, and the L2 attorney decides that the actual amount of lost business is $1.1 million. Accordingly, the L2 attorney adjusts the scoring as shown in Tables 14 and 15.
The L2 Score=2*L2 Liability Score+L2 Damages Score=2*690+750=2130. The L2 Score Threshold=1500 and L2 Score Reject Threshold=500. Here, the score is sufficiently high to move to L3.
At L3, the L3 attorney interviews the claimant, and hires a credit expert. The credit expert advises that it will be very difficult to prove damages. The L3 attorney leaves the liability score unchanged, and changes the damages score as shown in Table 16.
The L3 Score=2*L3 Liability Score+L3 Damages Score=2*690−500=880. The L3 Score Threshold=2500, and L3 Score Reject Threshold=500. Here, the score is insufficiently high to move to continue, but higher than the reject threshold, so this case will be referred to another attorney. In this example, the case is referred to Jane Wu of the Wu Law Firm.
Table 17 shows the external case summary generated by system 72. Table 18 shows the schedule generated for this case. Table 19 shows the budget generated for this case; in this example, all hours are billed at the same rate. In other embodiments, a variety of billing rates can be accommodated, corresponding to partners, associates, paralegals and so on. In this example, the expert witness's billing rate is different than the attorney's billing rate. In some embodiments, a graphic is provided showing how much money is expended as time passes; this is useful for settlement decisions. Table 20 shows the complaint generated for this case. Table 21 shows the legal memorandum generated for this case. Table 22 shows the document requests generated for this case. Table 23 shows the interrogatories generated for this case. Table 24 shows the requests for admissions generated for this case. Table 25 shows a deposition notice generated for this case. Table 26 shows a list of deposition topics generated for this case. For brevity, the Proof of Service is shown only with the Complaint; in actual practice, a similar proof of service is appended to each of the legal memorandum, document requests, interrogatories, requests for admissions and deposition notices.
Another embodiment of the present invention will now be described.
In this embodiment, instead of the case descriptive elements being defined manually, they are defied by a computer analyzing the law.
At step 150, case evaluation system 72 obtains reported decisions for the selected case type, such as by downloading from a case reporter service such as Lexis or Westlaw. Preferably, these decisions have embedded metatags identifying the semantic meaning of the sentences of the decision. These metatags are explained at www.w3.org/2001/sw/ discussing the semantic web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.
Historically, the major case reporting systems prepared so-called headnotes for each reported decision. The headnotes identify the outline section pertinent to the case, and contain short statements of the law presented in the case; usually, the headnotes use a common term for the substantive principles even if the term is not present in the decision. A legal researcher could then start with the case reporting system's outline to find relevant cases. Eventually, the case reporters put their reported decisions in computer-searchable form, so the headnotes became less important as a method of finding cases.
The present system can use keywords alone to identify cases, however, metatags improve the quality of information understanding by system 72.
Examples of metatags in a portion of a reported decision are shown in Table 27. A metatag is indicated by carats: < >. In this syntax, a law statement includes law elements and law results, when the law elements are present, the law result is in force. In some cases, metatags are added to clarify the meaning of indefinite pronouns and the like.
At step 155, system 72 obtains statutes for the selected case type, such as by downloading from Lexis, Westlaw, FindLaw or similar online service. Preferably, the statutes also have embedded metatags, as described above. Generally, reported decisions, also known as case law, state laws in the form “if (antecedent conditions) then (result)”. It will be appreciated that this is precisely the form of an inference rule used in so-called knowledge-based systems.
At step 160, system 72 synthesizes liability elements from the decisions and statutes. When metatags are present, this is a fairly straightforward process. For the example of Table 27, for the law result of “attorney responsible for stenographic services”, the liability elements are “attorney of record contracts for stenographic services as the agent of his client” and “the fact of attorney's agency is known to the party with whom attorney contracts”.
At step 165, system 72 synthesizes damages elements from the decisions and statutes, in similar manner as was done for liability elements.
At step 170, questions pertaining to the liability and damages elements are generated and formed into a question tree, that is, grouped to provide more details where appropriate. For the example of Table 27, sample questions are, “Did attorney contract with a party for stenographic services?” and “Was the fact of attorney's agency known to the party with whom attorney contracted?”.
Since new decisions and new statutes, possibly representing new law, could appear at any time,
At step 175, case evaluation system 72 obtains new reported decisions for the selected case type, such as by downloading from a case reporter service such as Lexis or Westlaw.
At step 180, system 72 obtains new statutes for the selected case type, such as by downloading from Lexis, Westlaw, FindLaw or similar online service.
At step 185, system 72 determines whether the new decisions or statutes contain new law, such as by comparing the elements identified by metatags in a new case with the elements already defined in storage 45.
If no new law is present, processing is complete.
If new law is present, at step 190, system 72 updates appropriate liability and/or damages elements.
At step 195, questions pertaining to the liability and damages elements are generated and the existing question tree is updated.
At step 200, the scoring procedure is updated to reflect the new liability and/or damages elements.
At step 205, the scoring thresholds for L1, L2, L3 are optionally updated.
Yet another embodiment of the present invention will now be described.
In this embodiment, when collecting information from the claimant, system 72 dynamically decides which questions to present to the claimant based on the claimant's responses to a set of predefined questions. Generally, this corresponds to how an attorney interviews a client: the attorney first asks what can I help you with, and then formulates more detailed questions in response to the information provided by the client.
Turning to
At step 465, system 72 gets the case descriptive information requested by the preformatted case descriptive questions from the claimant.
At step 470, system 72 generates a legal analysis based on the known facts. Generally, this is accomplished by checking whether the information provided by the claimant satisfies any of the antecedent conditions of system 72's legal rules. When some but not all of the antecedent conditions are specified, the legal analysis is of the form “legal result” may be present here because “specified antecedent conditions”. When all antecedent conditions are specified, the legal analysis is similar, except states “is present” instead of “may be present”. Of course, it is necessary to determine whether defendant has defenses to the legal result.
At step 475, system 72 determines whether more case descriptive information is required. Generally, this is simply a matter of determining whether there are rules for which some, but not all, antecedent conditions for which information has not been specified. The additional case descriptive information corresponds to the antecedent conditions for which information is missing.
If more case descriptive information is required, at step 480, system 72 generates additional case descriptive information questions and scoring, and returns to step 465. The additional questions can be generated by retrieving from a list of stored questions, or from dynamically generating the question based on the antecedent condition lacking information.
When sufficient case descriptive information is provided, processing continues at step 415, which is the same processing as step 415 of
Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention, and various modifications thereof, have been described in detail herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to these precise embodiments and the described modifications, and that various changes and further modifications may be effected therein by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention as defined in the appended claims.
