Artificial intelligence and legal analytics: Transformative tools for legal research

Abstract

The legal profession involves extensive research work termed legal research, it is a skill that must be mastered by law students, law teachers and practicing legal practitioners. These group of people spend great deal of their time reading and writing, preparing briefs, reports, letters and other assignments. Artificial intelligence has transformed the traditional practices of searching for legal resources which historically has been a daunting labor intensive process involves searching for legal resources in both prints and electronic formats, legal research in the year past involves assembling and gathering of voluminous books on both primary and secondary sources of law for legal research activities mostly in the law libraries of a law school, courts and law firms. This paper discusses various legal research tools that can ease the work of legal professionals and students and gathered information from literature such as journal articles, databases and other sources. The advent of technological innovation has brought a lot of changes to legal researching using technological tools, mostly done through online platforms such as Google and Bing, Westlaw, Heinonline, Case text, legal databases and other online tools to conduct efficient and effective legal research.