The EULinksChecker Add-in Tools for Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, assist legal professionals during the process of drafting or viewing on the Internet legal documents related to EU law by offering them convenient features for performing legal research based on legal citations or other semantic connections of the drafted/viewed documents with EU legislation and case law.

1. EULinksChecker add-in tools
Hristo Konstantinov, APIS
FP7-ICT-2013-SME-DCA

2. EULinksChecker profile
• Implementation – several applications, but one service:
– Installable add-ins integrated within the most popular browsers and
text editors:
o Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome
o MS Word and OpenOffice Writer,
plus
• Web service for PDF documents
• Function:
– Assisting legal professionals while editing, browsing or viewing
documents by identifying and establishing links to EU law and
EuroVoc thesaurus,
and
– Offering them access to EU and national legislation and case law
based on identified legal citations and recognised ontology terms
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3. EULinksChecker main features
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• Toolbar and menu functions
– Check for links
– Remove links
– Insert link
– Remove links from selection
– Save text to XML-file
– Settings
• Captured text functions of the host application
– Show hint on mouse over
– Click on link
• Context menu functions
– Show list of referring / indexed documents
– Create legal citation

4. Check for links function
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• In MS Word:
• In Open Office Writer:

5. Check for links function (cont.)
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• In Internet Explorer:
• In Mozilla Firefox:

6. Check for links function (cont.)
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• In Google Chrome:
• Description of the function:
– After confirmation by the user it identifies the language of the text opened or viewed
and sends it to the front-end web service of the EUCases Linking Platform
– The linking tools and the tools for classification recognise the legal citations to EU
law and the EuroVoc terms contained in user’s text
– Information about the recognised citations and terms and their positions within the
text is sent back to the add-in
– The user receives the text with highlights (underlines) all recognised citations and
terms

7. Check for links function: example
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8. Description of the other menu functions
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• Remove links
– After confirmation by the user it removes the highlights (underlining) of all
citations and terms recognised with the function “Check for links”
• Insert link
– Before using this function user must have selected a portion of text. When
this function is used, the user is prompted to enter a URL to an external
resource
– After entering it the selected text is highlighted and converted to a link to
the specified resource
• Remove links from selection
– Before using this function user must select a portion of text containing a
link or links to a legal citation or term. When this function is used the
contained links within the selection are removed

9. Description of the other menu functions (cont.)
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• Save text to XML-file
– When using this function user is required to select path and file name of
the text to be exported
– After that the text of the currently opened (viewed) document together with
the found legal citations and terms (in the case the “Check for links”
function has been already used) is sent to the Front-end Web Service of
the EUCases Linking Platform.
– The service forward it subsequently to the linking tools, the tools for
classification and the LT2XML conversion tools in the Back-end.
– Finally, the Front-end Web Service returns back the text in Legal XML
format to the EULinksChecker add-in which stores it into previously
selected file name and path
• Settings
– This function offers the user the option to change the interface language
– The interface languages to choose from are: Bulgarian, English, French,
German and Italian

10. Captured text functions of the host application
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• Show hint on mouse over:
– EULinksChecker add-in captures the “show hint on mouse over” function of the host
application when the user hovers over a legal citation recognised and highlighted
with the add-in “Check for links” function
– The add-in shows a hint containing:
• The text of the cited legal provision, or
• Bibliographic data about the cited legal act, or
• A link to the URL of the cited legal document in EUR-Lex portal (if the document is not
available in the EUCases Linking Platform)
• Click on link:
– EULinksChecker add-in captures the “click on link” function of the host application
when the user clicks on a legal citation or term recognised and highlighted with the
add-in “Check for links” function.
– If the click is on a legal citation, a web page in the user’s default browser is opened
containing the text of the cited document as published on the EUR-Lex portal.
– If the click is on a term from the EuroVoc thesaurus, the opened web page contains
a list of all documents indexed this term.

11. Captured text functions of the host application:
examples
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12. Context menu functions
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Function Intended use
Referring or indexed documents:
 All documents
 National case law
 National legislation
 EU case law
 EU legislation
By choosing one of these options the user sends
a request to the EUCases Linking Platform and in
response receives a list of documents from the
respective type referring to the same act or
provision or indexed with the same legal term.
The “All documents” option returns a list of
documents from all listed types. The list is
opened in a new window of the user’s browser.
Create legal citation:
 Short citation
 Full citation.
By choosing one of these options the user sends
a request to the EUCases Linking Platform and in
response receives in textual form a short,
respectively, a full reference to the official
publication of an EU legislative instrument or a
case of the EU Court of Justice. The received text
can be copied and inserted in user’s writing.

13. Context menu functions: example
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14. List of referring documents: example
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Link to document text in EUCases
Linking Platform
Link to the text of the document
published by the source

15. Document text delivered by EUCases
web service: example
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16. Document text at the source web
page: example
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17. Create legal citation function
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• Description:
– The functions “Short citation” and “Full citation” support users in citing EU
legislative instruments or judgements of the EU Court of Justice in their
writings
– They return in a short or long format the text of a reference to the official
publication of an EU legal document (piece of legislation or decision of the
EU Court of Justice) so that users can copy the reference and use it in the
document they are producing
• Short citation
– The Short citation function returns a textual reference to the publication
source only
• Full citation
– The Full citation function returns the full title of the legal document and a
textual reference to the publication source

18. Short citation function: example
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19. Full citation function: example
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20. Web service for PDF documents
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