The Transformation of Legal Research with Artificial Intelligence


Abstract views: 18 / PDF downloads: 10

Authors

  • Riffat Shahzady University of Punjab, Lahore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59022/ijlp.354

Keywords:

Legal Research, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Legal Informatics, Machine Learning, Legal Technology, Comparative Analysis, Legal Practice

Abstract

Legal research is very important for lawyers, judges, and scholars because it helps in understanding laws, past cases, and legal principles. Traditionally, legal research was done manually by reading case law, interpreting statutes, and finding precedents, but this method is becoming difficult because of the huge growth of legal documents and the increasing complexity of laws. This study compares traditional methods of legal research with modern methods that use artificial intelligence (AI). It looks at key factors like accuracy, speed, ease of use, and clarity. The research used a mix of numbers and feedback from 150 legal professionals working on 50 legal tasks. The results show that AI tools, such as natural language processing and automated citation systems, save time (65% faster) and find more relevant cases (40% better recall), while traditional methods are better at deep understanding. The study suggests combining AI with human skills for the best outcomes.

References

Ashley, K. D. (2017). Artificial intelligence and legal analytics: New tools for law practice in the digital age. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316761380

Bench-Capon, T., & Dunne, P. E. (2007). Argumentation in artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence, 171(10–15), 619–641. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2007.05.001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2007.05.001

Berring, R. C., & Edinger, E. A. (2021). Legal research in a nutshell (13th ed.). West Academic Publishing.

Callister, P. D. (2020). Beyond training: Law librarianship’s quest for the pedagogy of legal research education. Law Library Journal, 112(3), 353–394. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/w2ayg

Howland, J., & Lewis, N. K. (2019). The effectiveness of law school training in legal research: An empirical study. Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 38(2), 89–118. https://doi.org/10.1080/0270319X.2019.1621540

Katz, D. M. (2019). Quantitative legal prediction—or—how I learned to stop worrying and start preparing for the data-driven future of the legal services industry. Emory Law Journal, 62(4), 909–966.

Kuhlthau, C. C., & Tama, S. L. (2001). Information search process of lawyers: A call for “just for me” information services. Journal of Documentation, 57(1), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000007074 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000007076

Lohr, S. (2016, March 19). A.I. is doing legal work. But it won’t replace lawyers, yet. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/technology/ai-is-doing-legal-work-but-it-wont-replace-lawyers-yet.html

McCarty, L. T. (2017). Some arguments about legal arguments. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (pp. 215–224). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3086512.3086518 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/261618.261656

Passonneau, R. J., Habash, N., & Rambow, O. (2019). Machine reading for legal text analytics. Journal of Legal Analytics, 1(1), 15–45.

Remus, D., & Levy, F. S. (2017). Can robots be lawyers? Computers, lawyers, and the practice of law. Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, 30(3), 501–558.

Susskind, R. (2019). The future of law: Facing the challenges of information technology. Oxford University Press.

Thomson Reuters. (2020). Westlaw Edge: Technical documentation and user guide. Thomson Reuters Professional.

Woxland, T. A. (2018). Legal research in the computer age (4th ed.). Little, Brown and Company.

Zhong, H., Guo, Z., Tu, C., Xiao, C., Liu, Z., & Sun, M. (2018). Legal judgment prediction via topological learning. In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 3540–3549). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/D18-1386 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/D18-1390

Published

2025-08-30

How to Cite

Shahzady, R. (2025). The Transformation of Legal Research with Artificial Intelligence. International Journal of Law and Policy, 3(8), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.59022/ijlp.354

Issue

Section

Articles