Publications on the Logical Foundation for the Legal Apprentice

In designing the Legal Apprentice software, Apprentice Systems employs the default-logic framework for legal reasoning developed by Professor Vern R. Walker of the Hofstra University School of Law.  Professor Walker uses the Legal Apprentice in his teaching and research.  The logical architecture of the Legal Apprentice therefore has a sound and well-documented foundation.  For further information about Professor Walker’s default-logic framework, see the following publications (pdf versions of these publications, and related videos and materials, are available at the website for Professor Walker’s Legal Reasoning Project):

V.R. Walker, “A Default-Logic Paradigm for Legal Fact-Finding,” Jurimetrics Journal 47:193-243 (2007). This article lays out the default-logic framework, with a focus on how it integrates legal rules and policies with evidence evaluation – whether in courts or administrative agencies, and in domestic, foreign or international legal systems.

V.R. Walker, “Visualizing the Dynamics around the Rule/Evidence Interface in Legal Reasoning,” Law, Probability and Risk 6:5-22 (2007). This article emphasizes the visual nature of the default-logic framework, with a focus on visualizing the dynamic interaction between rule-based deductions and evidence evaluation (dynamics such as evidentiary relevance, findings of fact, and relevant-factor reasoning).

V.R. Walker, “A Default-Logic Framework for Legal Reasoning in Multiagent Systems,” in Technical Report FS-06-05 for the 2006 Fall Symposium of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (2006). This paper discusses the challenges of decision making in the legal environment, and how the Legal Apprentice architecture addresses the three major aspects of logic in the law: rule-based reasoning, evidence evaluation and process-constrained decision making.

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