legalxml-sc — archive

[James Cabral]

David, I’m not aware of an existing open standard for legal search taxonomies but this is exactly the sort of thing LegalXML was created for.  We are currently considering the creation of new TCs and I believe this would be a good fit for OASIS and LegalXML. I am CCing Monica Palmirani, a contributor to LegalXML who is actively working on a related taxonomy for parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents (see http://www.akomantoso.org/ ), Rolly Chambers (the LegalXML representative from the ABA), and the LegalXML Steering Committee to see if they are aware of any existing open standards in this area. Jim Cabral MTG Management Consultants, L.L.C. www.mtgmc.com (206) 442-5010 Phone (502) 509-4532 Mobile Helping our clients make a difference in the lives of the people they serve. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.  If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. From: David_Milstein@ao.uscourts.gov [mailto:David_Milstein@ao.uscourts.gov] Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:56 PM To: James E Cabral Subject: RE: LegalXML James, I appreciate your desire to make the AO's implementation of ecf4.0 a success.  I will do everything in my power to make this happen; as you recall, I came looking for you.  :  ) In a somewhat different vein, previously you asked me about joining OASIS. I would be very interested to know if there is a group interested in defining a schema, not of meta-information to be used in allowing interoperability of different government agencies, but more of encoding the taxonomy of lgal information itself. Think  an open-source analogue to the Westlaw key search system.  Implemented as an extension to LegalXML. I do not think that such a thing exists, I do not think it would be too hard to do, with a determined effort. See this article for a description of the state of the art which I think is accurate: http://www.flax.co.uk/blog/2010/11/11/legal-search-is-broken-can-it-be-fixed-with-open-source-taxonomies/ I have long been interested in crafting such a taxonomy, ever since my buddy was rated as having the "best legal outline" in his class at Michigan Law.  It got me thinking, everyone is making up their own taxonomies, but with personalized terms, and so impossible to abstract/mechanize. I even envision a primitive (at first) legal calculator, where a given set of facts, when applied as input to a specific legal question, would output the consensus result. But that is much more pie-in-the-sky stuff. What I specifically want to participate in is creating an open source taxonomy of legal terms, to facilitate search and interoperability of various public and private sector entities in the legal ecosystem. Please let me know if there is an OASIS committee involved in that. Thanks, David Milstein