Soochow Facilitates Legal Aid Through Artificial Intelligence

On December 19^th, 2018, Soochow University’s Artificial Intelligence Research Center, the Legal Aid Foundation, and the world-famous analytics company SAS jointly unveiled the first research project of its kind in Taiwan that would use natural language processing techniques in the legal field. The AI model created by SAS and the University’s AI Center in just three months of time can achieve an accuracy of as high as 80% in predicting the possible procedures, costs and outcomes of legal matters.

Using written records provided by the Legal Aid Foundation, the model would analyze the average amount of time it takes lawyers to process a case, and used the results as the basis for assigning cases in the future as well as for streamlining the application process. In the future, an “online legal assessment mechanism” will be built based on this AI model, which means that those seeking legal assistance will be able to make appointments for legal consultations online and find out how long the procedures are expected to take, reducing the uncertainty about lawsuits.

SCU President Wei-Ta Pan said that ever since the school’s AI Center was established, its goal has been to promote the application of AI to various fields such as law, finance, and social psychology through industry-academia cooperation. Owing to SAS’s technical support, the Legal Aid Foundation’s practical experience, and Soochow’s own legal expertise, legal services can be provided in a systemic and automatic manner, demonstrating the University’s commitment to helping society and to achieving criminal justice, Pan added.

Attorney K.C. Fan, chairperson of the Legal Aid Foundation shared that since its inception in 2004, the foundation has accumulated over 1.5 million entries of information. With big data on the rise, the Legal Aid Foundation has been reaching out in hopes to, through data mining and data analysis, to find meaningful indicators that may serve as the basis for resource allocation and policy-making. As simply a very first step toward collaboration with universities and industries, the Foundation hopes to continue increasing the quality and effectiveness of legal aid through similar joint efforts in the future.

For this project, SAS has provided its AI platform and technical expertise free of charge. Mike Chen, General Manager at SAS Taiwan, pointed out the uniqueness of legal industry as there is a vast amount of information and technical terms involved, and many cases are decided rather subjectively based on the judge’s own experience and thus require highly complicated natural language processing techniques. SAS is much honored, said Chen, to work with Soochow University’s AI Center and achieve the goal of using “data for good” and contributing to a better society.