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El Centre de Telecomunicacions i Tecnologies de la Informació (CTTI) is the public body that integrates all the information technologies and telecommunications services of the Government of Catalonia. It is responsible for designing, building, coordinating, and deploying technological projects to provide solutions to all departments and various bodies of the Public Administration, being in charge of managing and evolving all the IT services of the Ministry of Justice of the Government of Catalonia according to their needs and demands.
The Secretariat for Justice Administration of the Ministry of Justice of the Government of Catalonia includes among its functions the modernization of the justice administration in Catalonia through the renovation of judicial infrastructures, information systems, and the organization of the judicial office to achieve a more open, agile, efficient and quality justice.
The time judges dedicate to searching for precedents and legal foundations to write sentences is high and serves as an impediment to being more agile in drafting sentences. This causes long response times and creates a perception of slow justice.
In Catalonia, judges typically perform manual searches in the procedural management application for justice (eJusticia.cat), in their own archives of previous judgments, or through the Judicial Documentation Center (CENDOJ), which depends on the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), as well as other repositories or jurisprudential databases. The effectiveness of these searches varies depending on how much the magistrate recalls from similar cases or from parts of old judgments that might be applicable to the current case.
The challenge was to reduce the time spent drafting sentences by locating reusable information within judicial documents, such as sentences issued in any instance or jurisdiction, to accelerate and simplify the drafting process for judges.
Previously, locating paragraphs of interest (such as headings, legal foundations, dispositive parts, or judgments), legal or procedural references, or the entirety of judges’ previous sentences that were applicable or reusable for drafting new sentences was a manual and labor-intensive process. Judges spent considerable time locating, recalling, and reviewing prior judgments based on memory, including their content and the dates they were issued.
CT is a company specialized in data analytics and artificial intelligence with over 7 years of experience in the sector. It provides tailor-made solutions to enterprises across diverse industries and has participated in several EU-funded AI projects.
The solution is designed to automate and optimize several key aspects of a judge’s workflow, from the initial acquisition of legal documents to the final drafting of rulings. Here’s how the solution aligns with and addresses the challenge:
Streamlined Legal Document Processing: The proposed system begins by systematically collecting and refining legal documents from various judicial databases and judges’ private archives, preparing them for in-depth analysis. This directly addresses the challenge of time-consuming manual searches for precedents and legal foundations, thereby speeding up the drafting process.
Advanced Knowledge Integration and Analysis: By leveraging vectorization and Knowledge Graphs, the system provides a higher level of explainability for outputs and mitigates potential misinformation.
Personalized Recommendations and Contextual Understanding: The system employs clustering techniques and judge profiling to organize case law into relevant groups and tailor its output to individual judges’ historical preferences. This personalized approach ensures that the assistance provided is not only relevant but also respects each judge’s unique decision-making patterns.
Comprehensive Language Support: Recognizing the bilingual nature of the Catalan judicial system, the solution is designed to support both Catalan and Spanish, ensuring accessibility and usability for all judges in the region.
GDPR Compliance and Data Privacy: The solution is fully GDPR compliant, addressing the critical requirement for privacy and security in handling sensitive judicial information. Anonymizing algorithms and security measures are implemented to protect personal data.
Efficiency and Quality Improvement: By automating the search and analysis of legal documents and providing structured, personalized assistance, the solution promises a significant reduction in the time required to draft rulings. This not only enhances efficiency but also contributes to the uniformity and quality of sentences, ensuring fairness, equity, and consistency in the application of the law
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement 101071212.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
