@inproceedings{valvoda-cotterell-2024-towards,
title = "Towards Explainability in Legal Outcome Prediction Models",
author = "Valvoda, Josef and
Cotterell, Ryan",
editor = "Duh, Kevin and
Gomez, Helena and
Bethard, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jun,
year = "2024",
address = "Mexico City, Mexico",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.404",
pages = "7262--7282",
abstract = "Current legal outcome prediction models - a staple of legal NLP - do not explain their reasoning. However, to employ these models in the real world, human legal actors need to be able to understand the model{'}s decisions. In the case of common law, legal practitioners reason towards the outcome of a case by referring to past case law, known as precedent. We contend that precedent is, therefore, a natural way of facilitating explainability for legal NLP models. In this paper, we contribute a novel method for identifying the precedent employed by legal outcome prediction models. Furthermore, by developing a taxonomy of legal precedent, we are able to compare human judges and neural models with respect to the different types of precedent they rely on. We find that while the models learn to predict outcomes reasonably well, their use of precedent is unlike that of human judges.",
}
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="valvoda-cotterell-2024-towards">
<titleInfo>
<title>Towards Explainability in Legal Outcome Prediction Models</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Josef</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Valvoda</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ryan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Cotterell</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2024-06</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kevin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Duh</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Helena</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Gomez</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Steven</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Bethard</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Mexico City, Mexico</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Current legal outcome prediction models - a staple of legal NLP - do not explain their reasoning. However, to employ these models in the real world, human legal actors need to be able to understand the model’s decisions. In the case of common law, legal practitioners reason towards the outcome of a case by referring to past case law, known as precedent. We contend that precedent is, therefore, a natural way of facilitating explainability for legal NLP models. In this paper, we contribute a novel method for identifying the precedent employed by legal outcome prediction models. Furthermore, by developing a taxonomy of legal precedent, we are able to compare human judges and neural models with respect to the different types of precedent they rely on. We find that while the models learn to predict outcomes reasonably well, their use of precedent is unlike that of human judges.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">valvoda-cotterell-2024-towards</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.404</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2024-06</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>7262</start>
<end>7282</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Towards Explainability in Legal Outcome Prediction Models
%A Valvoda, Josef
%A Cotterell, Ryan
%Y Duh, Kevin
%Y Gomez, Helena
%Y Bethard, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2024
%8 June
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Mexico City, Mexico
%F valvoda-cotterell-2024-towards
%X Current legal outcome prediction models - a staple of legal NLP - do not explain their reasoning. However, to employ these models in the real world, human legal actors need to be able to understand the model’s decisions. In the case of common law, legal practitioners reason towards the outcome of a case by referring to past case law, known as precedent. We contend that precedent is, therefore, a natural way of facilitating explainability for legal NLP models. In this paper, we contribute a novel method for identifying the precedent employed by legal outcome prediction models. Furthermore, by developing a taxonomy of legal precedent, we are able to compare human judges and neural models with respect to the different types of precedent they rely on. We find that while the models learn to predict outcomes reasonably well, their use of precedent is unlike that of human judges.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.404
%P 7262-7282
Markdown (Informal)
[Towards Explainability in Legal Outcome Prediction Models](https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.404) (Valvoda & Cotterell, NAACL 2024)
ACL
- Josef Valvoda and Ryan Cotterell. 2024. Towards Explainability in Legal Outcome Prediction Models. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 7262–7282, Mexico City, Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.