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US 2021/0240926 A1Published application
Method and apparatus for improved analysis of legal documents
OwnerMatthew M. Tonuziinventor
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Abstract
The present disclosure provides apparatus and method for improving analysis of legal documents. A legal document is parsed to generate a list of desired legal authorities. These legal authorities are then acquired from a trusted repository of authorities and processed through a modified text-to-speech program in a desired order to obtain a brief audio recording of the cited authorities. Citing references to the legal authorities may be filtered as appropriate and added to the generated list of desired legal authorities.
Claims20
A method for analyzing a legal document comprising one or more legal authorities, the method comprising the steps of:
- using an electronic scraper to parse the legal document to generate a list of the legal authorities in a format suitable for input into a repository of legal documents;
- wherein the step of parsing the legal document comprises a case law subroutine, which comprises the steps of:
- determine a stop condition;
- for each text-based line of the legal document;
- search text for the character string “v.”;
- if “v.” is not italicized, then continue searching;
- else, if “v.” is italicized, then search the succeeding words for characters matching character strings associated with a prepopulated list of case reporters to identify the case reporter associated with the case law until the stop condition is met;
- extract numerical value preceding the case reporter;
- extract numerical value succeeding the case reporter;
- generate an entry on the list of legal authorities comprising the numerical value preceding the case reporter, the case reporter, and the numerical value succeeding the case reporter;
- transmitting the list of the legal authorities to the repository via a communications device in logical connection with the scraper;
- receiving, via the communications device, from the repository documents embodying the legal authorities within the list of the legal authorities;
- translating the documents embodying the legal authorities to one or more files comprising an audibly perceptible format, wherein the audibly perceptible format comprises a sound file comprising a spoken version of text associated with the legal authorities;
- and
- audibly broadcasting the files with a sound device.
12 more elements
An apparatus for improved analysis of legal documents comprising one or more legal authorities, the apparatus comprising:
- a processor;
- a communications access device in logical connection with a communications network;
- a memory comprising software with instructions executable on command to:
- parse the legal document to generate a list of the legal authorities in a format suitable for input into a repository of legal documents, wherein the instructions for parsing the legal document comprises a case law subroutine, which comprises the steps of:
- determine a stop condition;
- for each text-based line of the legal document:
- search text for the character string “v.”;
- if “v.” is not italicized, then continue searching;
- else, if “v.” is italicized, then search the succeeding words for characters matching character strings associated with a prepopulated list of case reporters to identify the case reporter associated with the case law until the stop condition is met;
- extract numerical value preceding the case reporter;
- extract numerical value succeeding the case reporter;
- and
- generate an entry on the list of legal authorities comprising the numerical value preceding the case reporter, the case reporter, and the numerical value succeeding the case reporter;
- transmit via the communications network the list of the legal authorities to the repository;
- download from the repository documents embodying the legal authorities from the list of the legal authorities;
- translate the documents embodying the legal authorities to one or more files comprising an audibly perceptible format, wherein the audibly perceptible format comprises a sound file comprising a spoken version of text associated with the legal authorities;
- and
- cause an audio device in logical communication with the apparatus to audibly broadcast the files.
15 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.