Research relevant legal materials to aid decision making
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can find, read and summarise the sources this work depends on, and it can cover far more of them than a person would ever open. What it does not do is decide which sources deserve trust, or what the findings mean for your situation.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Research and retrieval work |
| Jobs that do it | 7 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Web, data and docs, Generalist agents |
| O*NET activity | Getting Information (4.A.1.a.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 7 occupations that perform it.
- Examine legal data to determine advisability of defending or prosecuting lawsuit.
- Research laws, court decisions, documents, opinions, briefs, or other information related to cases before the court.
- Review and evaluate data on documents, such as claim applications, birth or death certificates, or physician or employer records.
- Research laws, regulations, policies, or precedent decisions to prepare for hearings.
- Read documents on pleadings and motions to ascertain facts and issues.
- Gather and analyze research data, such as statutes, decisions, and legal articles, codes, and documents.
- Examine documentation such as mortgages, liens, judgments, easements, plat books, maps, contracts, and agreements to verify factors such as properties' legal descriptions, ownership, or restrictions.
- Study Constitution, statutes, decisions, regulations, and ordinances of quasi-judicial bodies to determine ramifications for cases.
- Review complaints, petitions, motions, or pleadings that have been filed to determine issues involved or basis for relief.
- Research and analyze laws, regulations, policies, and precedent decisions to prepare for hearings and to determine conclusions.
- Conduct studies of appeals procedures to ensure adherence to legal requirements or to facilitate disposition of cases.
- Research legal issues and write opinions on the issues.
- Investigate facts and law of cases and search pertinent sources, such as public records and internet sources, to determine causes of action and to prepare cases.
- Summarize pertinent legal or insurance details, or sections of statutes or case law from reference books for use in examinations or as proofs or ready reference.
- Conduct studies of appeals procedures in field agencies to ensure adherence to legal requirements and to facilitate determination of cases.
- Determine whether land-related documents can be registered under the relevant legislation, such as the Land Titles Act.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for research and retrieval work, and what it costs.
Research is the one shape of work that needs no integration at all, so a single $20 assistant with browsing is the whole stack. Add a crawler only once you are pulling hundreds of pages on a schedule rather than reading a few.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
7 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Consult legal materials or public records”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Evaluate information related to legal matters in public or personal records | 8 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.