Conceptual information retrieval in litigation support systems

This paper is concerned with information retrieval in the context of supporting complex litigation by managing large numbers of documents. It is shown that the application is sufficiently different from searching for case/statute text or reasoning with the law, so as to render the techniques developed for the latter inappropriate, A new approach to information representation and system design is identified and developed. The paper presents an architecture that takes into account the peculiar characteristics of the application and enables the utilisation of existing skills of professionals, thereby facilitating rapid and consistent encoding. An extended object-oriented paradigm underlies the architecture. Using this paradigm, it has been possible to combine techniques developed for large databases with the purposive or functional similarity approach to search and retrieval taken in case-based design systems.