About

The University of Ottawa’s Legal Text Mining Lab

An Interdisciplinary Lab: Law + Computer Science

The uOttawa Legal Text Mining Lab brings together expertise in law and computer science to rethink legal analysis in the age of big (legal) data. Millions of legal texts exist and each harbours useful insights that can make the law more effective, just and accessible. Yet, legal scholars typically lack the tools to tap into this resource. Conversely, computer scientists have the skills to mine data, but not the subject matter expertise to know what questions to asks and what problems to solve. Our Lab integrates expertise from both fields to produce insights that neither discipline could generate on its own.

List of activities

• – Joint Research Projects
• – Regular Group Meetings
• – Undergraduate and Graduate Co-Supervision
• – Project Advisory

Why do we need legal text mining? As lawyers, we investigate legal documents in detail to interpret terms and analogise or distinguish their meaning. While this technique works well with small numbers of legal texts, it becomes exceedingly difficult to apply it to hundreds or thousands of contracts, statutes or cases. To render legal analysis scalable we need a different set of tools. This is where legal text mining comes in. By leveraging computer science for the study of law, we can make sense of large amounts of legal information more effectively and efficiently.