The document discusses a framework for parsing legal documents, extracting temporal expressions, representing them using ontologies and rules, and enabling temporal reasoning to answer queries about the documents. The framework includes resources for temporal expressions, extensions to existing ontologies like ODRL, and a temporal legal reasoner. It will be evaluated on its ability to annotate documents, represent temporal data, and answer queries accurately. An example shows temporal information extraction from a judgment, its representation, and using the representation to answer a question about the complaint date. The framework aims to integrate different components to enable new possibilities in legal temporal reasoning.

1. Mining, Representation and
Reasoning with Temporal
Expressions in the Legal
Domain
María Navas-Loro
mnavas@fi.upm.es
RuleML+RR Doctoral Consortium - July 14, 2017
(Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel, Asunción Gómez-Pérez)
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain)

2. THE IDEA
Context
2

3. Legal documents everywhere
3

4. Solution: Q&A about time
We want to make these documents understandable,
answering questions about them.
4
?
!
We focus on judgments
and queries related to time.

5. STATE OF THE ART
Unifing fields
5

6. NLP
We need to detect temporal expressions in text.
(Tarsqi, HeidelTime)
6

7. Representation
Then we have to properly represent them.
(Ontologies, TimeGraphs, T-Prolog…)
(OASIS-LegalRuleML, ODRL…)
7

8. Reasoning
Finally, reasoning will
be needed to find the
answer to the queries.
8
? !
(Allen’s Interval Temporal Logic, Temporal Languages,
N3Logic, Temporal Description Logics …)

9. Thesis
Goal
Develop and study an integrated framework that
parses judgments, extracts and represents
temporal expressions and reasons upon them.
Main hypothesis
Expressing temporal rules able to accommodate
the findings of the NLP algorithms and enabling
temporal reasoning in an integrated manner would
unleash new possibilities in temporal legal
reasoning.
9

10. THESIS
Scope and framework
10

11. Scope: judgments
11

12. Framework
Resources for dealing with temporal expressions in
the legal domain (rules, semantic frames…)
Temporal extensions for
ODRL and SHACL
Temporal and legal reasoner
QUERY
legal
documents
REASONER
N
L
P
(current date,
location…)
context
ANSWER
12

13. Framework
Resources for dealing with temporal expressions in
the legal domain (rules, semantic frames…)
Temporal extensions for
ODRL and SHACL
Temporal and legal reasoner
QUERY
legal
documents
REASONER
N
L
P
(current date,
location…)
context
ANSWER
13

14. Framework
Resources for dealing with temporal expressions in
the legal domain (rules, semantic frames…)
Temporal extensions for
ODRL and SHACL
Temporal and legal reasoner
QUERY
legal
documents
REASONER
N
L
P
(current date,
location…)
context
ANSWER
14

15. Framework
Resources for dealing with temporal expressions in
the legal domain (rules, semantic frames…)
Temporal extensions for
ODRL and SHACL
Temporal and legal reasoner
QUERY
legal
documents
REASONER
N
L
P
(current date,
location…)
context
ANSWER
15

16. Evaluation
• Each part has its own validation.
• Statistical performance measurements for NLP annotation
(such as precision and recall)
• Quality and completeness for the designed representation.
• Rate of true answers by
the reasoner.
16
• Final framework will
be tested by end
users: the system
must be able to
answer to real users queries.

17. AN EXAMPLE
Real case
17

18. Example (NLP)
We have a piece of a judgment in English
extracted from Eur-Lex.
18
14
On 5 March 2010, Mr Costeja González, a Spanish national
resident in Spain, lodged with the AEPD a complaint against La
Vanguardia Ediciones SL, which publishes a daily newspaper
with a large circulation, in particular in Catalonia (Spain) (‘La
Vanguardia’), and against Google Spain and Google Inc. The
complaint was based on the fact (…)
16
By decision of 30 July 2010, the AEPD rejected the complaint in
so far as it related to La Vanguardia (…)

19. Example (Representation)
Possible representation of a complaint including
temporal information.
19

20. Example (Reasoning)
20
When was the complaint against
Google Inc made?
Google Inc
05.03.2010
Google Inc

21. Example (Reasoning)
21
When was the complaint against
Google Inc made?
Google Inc
05.03.2010
Google Inc

22. Example (Reasoning)
22
When was the complaint against
Google Inc made?
Google Inc
05.03.2010
Google Inc

23. Example (Reasoning)
23
When was the complaint against
Google Inc made?
Google Inc
05.03.2010
Google Inc
05.03.2010

24. Example (Reasoning)
24
When was the complaint against
Google Inc made?
Google Inc
05.03.2010
Google Inc
05.03.2010
It was lodged on 5 March 2010.

25. CONCLUSION
Expected contributions
25

26. Conclusions
• An framework that parses judgments, extracts
and represents temporal expressions and
reasons upon them, in an integrated manner.
• Expected resources and innovation for each of
the three parts:
• Tagged corpora, expressions, semantic frames, synonyms,
new NLP techniques...
• Representation extension of existing languages / reuse of
existing ontologies.
• Rules for temporal legal reasoning.
26

27. Thank you for your attention
27

28. Bibliography
Tarsqi Toolkit: http://www.timeml.org/tarsqi/toolkit/index.html
HeidelTime: https://github.com/HeidelTime
LegalRuleML: Athan, T., Governatori, G., Palmirani, M., Paschke, A., &
Wyner, A. (2015, July). LegalRuleML: Design principles and
foundations. In Reasoning Web International Summer School (pp. 151-
188). Springer International Publishing.
ODRL: https://www.w3.org/community/odrl/
Time Ontology: https://www.w3.org/TR/owl-time/
Timegraphs: Gerevini, A., Schubert, L., & Schaeffer, S. (1993).
Temporal reasoning in Timegraph I–II. ACM SIGART Bulletin, 4(3), 21-
25.
T-Prolog: Futo, I., & Szeredi, J. (1980). T-Prolog user manual. Institute
for Coordination of Computer Techniques, Budapest.
Allen’s TL: Allen, J. F. (1983). Maintaining knowledge about temporal
intervals. Communications of the ACM, 26(11), 832-843.
N3Logic: Berners-Lee, T., Connolly, D., Kagal, L., Scharf, Y., &
Hendler, J. (2008). N3logic: A logical framework for the world wide
web. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 8(3), 249-269.
EUR-Lex: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html
28

29. Mining, Representation and
Reasoning with Temporal
Expressions in the Legal
Domain
María Navas-Loro
mnavas@fi.upm.es
RuleML+RR Doctoral Consortium - July 14, 2017
(Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel, Asunción Gómez-Pérez)
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain)