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• GAZETTE
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1988
Expert Systems and
Commun i cat i ons
A Report on the recent Technology Committee Seminar, held at Tulfarris House,
Biessington,
Co. Wicklow, on 18-20 September,
1987.
It has been one of t he gu i d i ng l i ghts f or the Technology
Commi t t ee since its f ounda t i on in 1983 to encourage
practitioners t o invest in and make full use of wo rd processing
equ i pmen t. The Commi t t ee has always f o l l owed t he ax i om,
by now wi de ly accep t ed, t hat every so l i c i tor 's practice no
ma t t er how b ig or how sma ll can benefit f r om t he
i n t r oduc t i on of wo r d processing. Word processing has now
been available f or we ll over a decade and, like most f ace ts
of the compu t er industry, t he produc ts have not s tood still
but have developed.
Starting w i th straight forward text
manipulation and reproduction,
w
° r d processing systems have
developed to include the automatic
production of particular documents
jn sequence at pre-determined
ln
tervals (known as word processor
based d o c ume nt p r oduc t i on ).
Comprehensive support systems
have evolved f r om d o c ume nt
production systems wh i ch on the
happen i ng of p r e - d e t e rm i n ed
events, p r odu ce
d o c ume n t s,
ma i n t a in d i a r i es and, whe re
appropriate, maintain financial
accounts of transactions. These
support systems have become
Particularly popular in the area of
debt collection and are making
encroachments in the areas of
conveyancing and more general
litigation. A number of Irish firms
have invested heavily, both in terms
°
f
t i me and money in t he
development and implementation
these systems.
The Techno l ogy Comm i t t ee
reviews a wide range of journals
and other sources of news, both
from sister Societies in neighbour-
ing jurisdictions and the United
States together w i th a range of
computer journals. From this back-
ground information we became
aware, s ome t i me ago, t h at
attempts were being made to
i n t r odu ce
so - ca l l ed
( l imi t ed
intelligence) expert systems both in
the field of legal practice and else-
where. While the underlying pro-
g r ammes wh i ch make t hese
systems possible had been freely
available for less than a year and
therefore a limited amount of work
has been done upon them, it was
by
DAV ID BEATTIE
So l i c i t or
felt that it would be useful for the
profession (for once) to consider
t he possible scope of t hese
s y s t ems (and a t t emp t i ng to
influence their development should
we feel them to have any useful
application) before the computer
companies or software houses
produced them as a
fait accompli.
Through close liaison, with Society
for Computers and Law which is an
i n t e r na t i ona l ly spread soc i e ty
based in the UK, the Committee
had access to some of the leading
European knowledge on this topic.
A seminar was organised at
Tulfarris House, B i es s i ng t on,
County Wicklow to debate the
merits of expert systems and as a
secondary topic, although for many
people it proved just as interesting,
communications between word
processors and computers based in
different offices. The discussion on
expert systems was structured in
the form of a debate as opinions are
clearly
d i v i ded
about
t he
practicality and usefulness of
expert systems both generally and
particularly in solicitors' offices.
What is en expert system?
At this point it might be useful to
examine what is an expert system
and what exactly it attempts to do.
The simplest definition of an expert
system which was heard during the
seminar was that it was a computer
programme/system which was pre-
programmed w i th a series of rules
concerning a particular area of
expertise (in a legal con t ext
perhaps a very simple example
would be the rules contained in
Section 45 of the Land Act, 1965;
this of course would not be a
practical example because it is a
relatively simple set of rules to
remember and comprehend). The
user of the system answers a series
of questions posed by the com-
puter by typing in 'yes' or 'no' or
wha t e v er and t he c omp u t er
analyses these answers and by
asking further questions comes to
a conclusion concerning this sort of
system leading to an ability to
delegate matters of interpretation
of law to junior personnel who
would not necessarily have the
experience to do this themselves.
Expert systems are distinguished
from traditional computer systems
by a number of characteristics
including: —
(i)
In an expert system the rules
governing and defining the
area of expertise are built into
the system. In a traditional
system a sequence of steps
or procedures are built into
the system.
(ii) In an expert system it should
be
poss i b le
to
wo rk
backwards from the system
itself in order to establish the
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