Legal Research

"Caselaw.Cognition"

This item was written by I. Haight: "Cognition, a privately held corporation, developed and patented the Semantic Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology that aims to improve search by improving computers' ability to "understand" language. English words often have multiple meanings, and humans identify the correct meaning of a word from its context.

...When a user inputs search terms into an engine running Semantic NLP, the Cognition Parser analyzes the grammar of the sentence and matches search terms against Cognition's Semantic Map in an effort to obtain the user's intended meaning of the words from their context. Alongside the search results, Cognition displays the meaning of each word in the query based upon its contextual analysis; users can select a different meaning from a dropdown menu if the meaning is incorrect...

Caselaw.Cognition accurately analyzed all the search terms I entered and retrieved relevant results. No search engine is perfect for legal research of course--results may discuss the user's topic only parenthetically and don't help the user determine the significant cases for the development of the law. Nevertheless, Caselaw.Cognition is a strong tool for searching federal case law, with the added bonus that it is freely available. In addition to natural language searching, Cognition also supports the use of many Boolean terms, which are detailed in the "Help" section. Semantic NLP is currently available with LexisNexis Concordance and Merrill Lextranet, two commercial e-discovery and litigation management tools."

Source: "InSite." Vol.15, No.11. 25 January 2010. Cornell University Law Library. To subscribe send the following request to: listproc@cornell.edu: Subscribe InSITE-L [YourFirstName] [YourLastName]  

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on January 25, 2010 (boomark / email).