This research will assist citizens in accessing legal texts in a way that will simplify the process and make the retrieved data more relevant and timely. Traditional search engines provide free access to a large amount of information; however, for the search to be accurate and useful, the user may need to understand the legal domain in order to craft good queries and thoroughly search the applicable databases. This project will circumvent these issues by creating a proactive legal information retrieval and filtering system, which will recommend relevant information and also educate users about the databases through an interactive faceted search interface. The researchers, based at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, will advance the fundamental theory and techniques for developing efficient search tools as well as create a method to provide the general public free access to relevant information at the right time and in the right context.
CITRIS research to assist citizens in accessing legal texts
