Improving Access to Justice with Legal Chatbots

On average, one in three Canadians will be affected by a legal problem over a three-year period. Unfortunately, whether it is legal representation or legal advice, the very high cost of these services excludes disadvantaged and most vulnerable people, forcing them to represent themselves. For these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStats (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 3; no. 3; pp. 356 - 375
Main Authors Queudot, Marc, Charton, Éric, Meurs, Marie-Jean
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published MDPI AG 01.09.2020
Subjects
chatbot
dialog system
information retrieval
natural language processing
question answering system
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Summary:On average, one in three Canadians will be affected by a legal problem over a three-year period. Unfortunately, whether it is legal representation or legal advice, the very high cost of these services excludes disadvantaged and most vulnerable people, forcing them to represent themselves. For these people, accessing legal information is therefore critical. In this work, we attempt to tackle this problem by embedding legal data in a conversational interface. We introduce two dialog systems (chatbots) created to provide legal information. The first one, based on data from the Government of Canada, deals with immigration issues, while the second one informs bank employees about legal issues related to their job tasks. Both chatbots rely on various representations and classification algorithms, from mature techniques to novel advances in the field. The chatbot dedicated to immigration issues is shared with the research community as an open resource project.
ISSN:2571-905X
2571-905X
DOI:10.3390/stats3030023