The Gazette 1988

• 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.

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

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

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