Representing Construction Contract Legal Knowledge

Applications are increasingly proving the adequacy of expert systems techniques in representing legal reasoning. This article demonstrates the knowledge representation aspects of a construction contract claim analysis. DISCON, an expert system designed to advise on the validity of differing site conditions claims, illustrates issues in legal reasoning and the corresponding knowledge representations. This paper covers the structure of the legal knowledge, the configuration of the reasoning flow; the type of information collected to analyze a case, the decision-making process, and the impact of uncertainties. The article also briefly discusses the future of legal assistance in the form of an expert system.