Searching for decisions during the ruling tsunami and predictive analyst

For several years, there has been a huge increase in the number of published judgments. This is due, among other things, to the creation of public bases of judgments (and more broadly to the section). This makes access to jurisprudence seemingly easier. As a result, in commercial legal information systems a month comes from several to several dozen one thousand new decisions[1]. Is this really beneficial for the user?

According to former SSN Jacek Gudowski: “Let us realize that tens come every day, one hundred, one thousand decisions. And this influx will continue. It's gonna be harder and harder to deal with this spilling magma.

Universal, easy access to jurisprudence has paradoxically become a factor that hinders the discernment of lawyers, and the bases of jurisprudence have become shops in which you can acquire almost any ruling for the priceless – on every subject and based on just the decision we seek and need.

The consumer is annoyed to see this mass of merchandise, but unable to easily get to what he is looking for. And he often doesn't even know what he's looking for or feels only intuitively what he needs. He is therefore looking at some tool to make a rational preliminary selection of judgments.” 2 .

On the other hand, we must remember that still not all judgments are published. In particular, this is evident in the case of decisions of ordinary courts. Annual appeals, district and district courts spend from several to several one million decisions.

In the year 2016 the impact of cases to the general courts 14,900,000 and was smaller by 1.6 percentage point compared to the previous year, compared to the year 2012 increased by 6.2%. During the period 2012‒2016 The biggest impact was in the year 2013 – 15,169,808 cases[3].

According to Judge Aneta Lazarska: “The judgments must be public and must be accessible, and the courts should not censor which rulings they publish and which they do not publish. Increase in judgments above 20,000 monthly, it indicates that there are still a lot of inaccessible judgments outside this sphere.

In Poland we have 10,000 Judges, and each of them gives a minimum five decisions per month, and in practice much more... The phenomenon of so-called disappearing judgments is also worrying. In my practice now, more than half of my justifications are only oral. These rulings will therefore never be published.

This is very disturbing, because if judges use this form of justification to a greater extent, then perhaps there should be a database of oral recordings of judgments. Otherwise these judgments will not be available at all’ 4 .

Is there a ‘golden measure’ in this situation, a solution that improves the work of the user working with the case law? It seems that knowledge of the existing bases of judgments and the methods of seeking judgments in them can be a great facilitation. The efficient use of available methods of search for judgments can save a lot of time for case research.

Is jurisprudence even needed by a lawyer in his daily work and where will he find it?

It should be noted that the scope of the lawyer's daily work varies depending on the specialization or size of the law firm. Other activities are performed by an attorney or legal counsel specialised in family law, other in commercial or economic law.

The scope of daily work also depends largely on whether a lawyer has to help an assistant, or whether most of the daily work has to do itself. This is most often the case in smaller and in particular single-member offices. However, a common catalogue of activities that lawyers perform on a daily basis can be distinguished.

one of them is collecting information on the state of law and case law[5].

In the day-to-day work of a lawyer, it is therefore necessary to use the extensive collections of the Supreme Court jurisprudence, but also administrative or universal courts. European case law is increasingly used regularly (or at least should be) widely understood.

This is also confirmed by statistics on the use of resources in legal information systems. The ruling is second after legal acts, the category of documents used by lawyers in their daily work. As it turns out, case research is an act by many lawyers described as burdensome or rather burdensome.

The main factors affecting the nuisance of the task include the extensiveness of the case law (as further explained) and the changes in legislation and new legislation. In addition, the information sources indicated are dispersed[6].

There is no publicly available, centralised database containing the rulings of all courts of different types and instances. However, for several years or several years (depending on the database) lawyers can use Internet access to open, public courts' case law, both national and European.

Assessed by lawyers as the most important and most useful case law of the Supreme Court is published on the website www.sn.pl. It is divided into several subcategories, e.g. the latest rulings, the basis of judgments and the official collections of judgments or newsletters. The search engine itself in the Database of Judgments, while allows to search in/by:

• • the content of the judgment and the justification,
• • signature,
• • the form of the judgment (with the possibility of selecting a specific form from the list),
• • the date of issue of the judgment (with the option to enter the date of the specific date or range of dates),
• • Chamber (with the possibility of selecting a chamber from the available list),
• • the details of the Judge made up of the Judge,
• • the chairman and the rapporteur, the co-rapporteur,
• • the author of the justification, and
• • the form of the composition of the judge (with the option of choosing the type of composition from the list)[7].

Unfortunately, most of the fields in the search engine are text fields, without information about the rules for entering the individual values searched in them. It is also worth noting that, unfortunately, not all decisions of the Supreme Court are published. Non-executive rulings in the online Supreme Court's rulings shall make public the references to access to public information[8].

In everyday work lawyers also refer to the case law of the common courts, i.e. primarily appeal courts, but also district and district courts. This is for several reasons. After first, Lawyers want to know the widest possible spectrum of arguments in a given case and to be ready for possible allegations from the opposing party.

After second, often the lawyer wants to verify how a specific court or even a judge has ruled in a similar case (more specifically, the way in which decisions are sought in the remainder). After third, Sometimes the case law of SN has not yet developed in certain categories of cases.

A year ago 2012 General Court rulings are available on the POSP website conducted by the Ministry of Justice[9].

The search engine allows you to find the ruling according to:

• • the court (with the possibility to clarify the appeal, the district or even the department),
• • the judge (text-only option, but with the possibility to clarify the function of judge),
• • signatures (signature record of the year as two last digits, e.g. V Kz 676/21, not V Kz Regulation (EU) 676/2021,
• • selected subject matter (criminal and civil),
• • a specific provision.

In addition, at the stage of determining the criteria in the search form, it can be clarified that the result list contains the rulings with these.

As noted above, lawyers also use administrative court decisions. The Central Database of Judgments of Administrative Courts was established in order to create the conditions for stakeholders to have full access to the content of decisions of administrative courts. Many users consider this database to be a model basis for decisions made publicly available. The database includes decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court and provincial administrative courts issued after January 2004; It also contains selected decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court from earlier years. The database of judgments is available at: judgment.nsa. gov.pl. The database is updated on a daily basis incrementally with data collected in the NSA and WSA computer system, which have not been excluded from online sharing and for which a version of the quoted ruling has been created. It should be stressed that under the main window of the search for judgments there is a comprehensive and detailed instruction manual containing a description of the search rules[10], Therefore, there is no need for duplication in this study. Metadata are included in the database, after which decisions can be searched, such as:

• • signature,
• • court,
• • type of judgment,
• • the case symbol,
• • the date of the judgment,
• • the function of the judge,
• • the status of the judgment (valid, terminating, with the thesis, with reasons, with separate opinion),
• • type of body under appeal,
• • thematic slogans,
• • the provisions laid down,
• • an official collection of judgments,
• • the existence of a vote to the ruling.

In addition, you can search the database after searching for words/phrases. This search can be further clarified to ensure that the words sought appear anywhere in the content of the ruling, in the operative part, in the the thesis or in the explanatory memorandum. In addition, it is possible to specify whether the search is to include a word variety.

With regard to these European jurisprudences, access through public parties seems to be even more difficult and resources are even more fragmented.

As a public source, it is worth mentioning in the so-called Luxembourg case law 11 ‒ Official website of EU law 12 , whether the official website of the EUSEU - Curia 13 , As regards the case law of Strasbourg 14 – Official website of the ETPC case-law[15].

However, it should be noted that the latter are only published in English or French. The selected rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are also published on the Universal Courts’ Judgment Portal described above[16].

Despite the fact that some of the above-mentioned public judgments bases contain relatively rich resources and search opportunities, they may most often be insufficient for a professional proxy.

In addition to the fact that they are very dispersed sources, they usually do not contain any link between the rulings themselves and, above all, the related legislation and authorship. Such functions are available in commercial systems – such as LEX or Legalis.

The further part will therefore discuss in detail possible ways of seeking decisions in these cases. two legal information systems.

How to make best use of the existing possibilities for seeking judgments in commercial legal information systems?

In systems such as LEX or Legalis, there are many possibilities to search for judgments, which allows you to adjust the way you search for your ruling information.

On the other hand, the user does not always know all of these possibilities and sometimes does not even realize the existing search options that allow for faster and more efficient work. Often it only moves through the paths, using proven search methods that are not always optimal and most effective.

It is therefore also worth bringing these less known ways of searching for judgments in LEX and Legalis, also drawing attention to the differences and nuances between programmes.

Search for judgments in the LEX and Legalis legal information system

The list of judgments in LEX is displayed after being selected in the left panel, in the ‘Resources’ category ‘Decisions and Official Writings’, and in the Legalis programme ‘Menu’ category ‘Decisions’.

The list in both programmes includes the decisions of the Polish courts, the widely understood European jurisprudence and the decisions of non-judicial bodies (administrative decisions).

In the LEX database, judgments are divided by authors into two Subcategories: judgments of courts and administrative decisions, rulings of individual courts and other bodies in Legalis are available from the level of the main category of judgment indicated.

The text of the ruling can be distinguished in both programmes: the decision-making body, the operative part, the justification that is most often divided into LEX two part of the legal justification.

Both LEX and Legalis allow for the search for judgments in a number of ways and according to numerous criteria or ruling data.

If you know the signature of the requested judgment, you will find it most easily and quickly by entering the signature in the search box It is important that the signature is entered according to a well-defined scheme, which in both systems is the following: Roman numeral, space, lettering (no matter is the use of large or small letters), space, case number, slash, year of impact (importantly, year must be saved in the form of two last digits), e.g.

VII SA/Wa 1767/17. Accepting the entry of the judgment signature will result in the direct opening of the decision.

In addition, only in LEX from the open content of the ruling, in the lower right corner there is immediately the possibility to search for documents containing the phrase given in its text, which in this case will be "Go to search for the phrase VII SA/Wa 1767/17.”

It is also worth noting the possibility of seeking judgments after the ruling number in LEX and Legalis. This is the best way to immediately find the document quoted in other publications: electronic and paper. Simply enter the publication number of the LEX or Legalis database in the search box and confirm.

For the result to be customs and precise, it is very important to maintain the format of the entry: ‘LEX number’. The letter size of the word ‘LEX’ does not matter, e.g. LEX No. 2551073 or lex no. 2551073.

When it comes to searching after the ruling number in Legalis, it will be effective to use the format: Number 2502886, number 2502886 or 2502886.

Information on the number assigned to the judgment in the LEX database shall be presented at the ruling on the resultant list or at the level of the content of the decision on both the ‘weight’ icon and under the ‘split’ given at the justification.

In the Legalis programme, information on the number of the judgment is available in the decision and in its metric.

Often, however, the user does not know the exact signature or number of the given ruling, and he has knowledge of other data of the formal ruling. Then the best solution will be to use the so-called Advanced Search.

For this purpose, the Advanced Search window (available in LEX from the button next to the LEX Search field) should select the Judgment and Official Writings category.

In the Advanced Search window in LEX, the following criteria are available: • search phrase (with the possibility of narrowing the search results to the occurrence of a phrase only in the title and/or only in the content of the thesis),

• the ruling compositions,

• place of publication of the judgment,

• composition of the court,

• the number of the judgment,

• cited rulings (then only judgments which have been designated/ quoted in other judgments will appear on the resulting list),
• the text of the statement of reasons (only reasoned rulings will appear on the resulting list),
• court/organ,
• signature (remember the above mentioned signature recording method),
• type,
• location/centre,
• date of notice/issue.

It is possible to add/remove the search criteria indicated above. The user can therefore create a personalized search filter for decisions according to certain data, e.g. which he has access to or uses most frequently in a specific situation.

In the specified Advanced Search options, there are also the search options described above, whether after the signature or after the ruling number. It is also worth noting here that LEX allows to search for judgments after rulings.

Using the Advanced Search, you can follow the decisions given by the particular composition of the court, as well as the rulings given by the specific decision-makers, with an additional possibility to clarify the roles of those persons in the given composition.

In each of these cases, it is possible to choose the data from the drop-down menu and to enter them manually. In addition, at each hint, the number of decisions meeting the criterion is displayed. This is particularly useful in situations where the user would like to check how a certain judge decides in certain cases.

As in LEX, Legalis also allows for the search of judgments according to additional formal metadata of a given judgment, such as:

• • signature,
• • the date of the decision,
• • the form of the judgment,
• • type of court (e.g. provincial administrative courts, appeals courts, etc.),
• • court (this is a clarification of the type of court, e.g. the Court of Appeal in Gdańsk, etc.),
• • publication (allows the choice of a publisher in which the decision was published with the possibility of specifying the year, number or position),
• • the number of the judgment (this is the number under which the decision is made in the Legalis programme),
• • the composition of the court (it should be noted that, unlike in the LEX system, there is no possibility to choose the name of the judge from the list, and there is a need to enter "which may impede the search".

In addition, the above criteria may be supplemented by the condition that the judgment has a vote or is linked to another development (as above) or to judgments merely cited (in other judgments).

It is also worth to add that in this advanced filter available in Legalis in addition to searching after the signature in the standard way there is a possibility of searching after the split signature. Complete then one of four fields:

• • the Roman numeral,
• • lettering,
• • case number,
• • The year of the impact of the case is important, as with standard search after signature, also here you should enter only two Last digits.

If only some fields are completed, the Legalis program will search for all rulings whose signatures contain selected designations. However, if the signature does not contain all four only fields relating to the indications in it must be completed.

However, usually a professional seeks decisions relating to a specific issue. In this case, both LEX and Legalis provide several options to search for judgments, such as: search for index passwords or search for judgments directly linked to a specific provision of a legal act. When a user is looking for judgments related to a specific issue, he should enter a phrase in LEX in the LEX Search window. In the process of entering, hints of Index concepts are displayed. All you have to do is specify the right concept and open the password. Then in the left panel of the LEX program choose – Judgments and official writings, and In the next step to clarify the category – Judgments of the courts. Such a list of rulings relating to a given issue can be narrowed down and clarified according to a number of criteria, such as:

• • up-to-date (regards the validity of the thesis of a given judgment, more of which is later),
• • content (judgments with content are presented, i.e. having a justification and decisions without content, i.e. having only thesis),
• • court/organ,
• • location/centre,
• • type of judgment,
• • publication (i.e. the place of publication of a given judgment),
• • date of notification/issue of the decision,
• • keywords,
• • language versions (more on this subject later).

Decisions related to a specific issue can also be searched directly by the Index in the left panel of the LEX main window. An alphabetically arranged list of passwords available in the program appears, which can also be searched by indicating an interesting phrase in the ‒ Search password field. The documents received in the result list should be limited to judgments and can be further narrowed according to the above criteria. In addition, the list of judgments can be clarified according to the criterion in the content of a particular phrase, by indicating it in Search in results and sorting:

• • according to the date of the ruling (the latest or oldest),
• • according to the date of the new ruling (i.e. the date on which the decision was added to the programme),
• • Alphabetically (A‒Z or Z‒A),
• • by publication site (from the oldest or from the latest),
• • according to the validity of the ruling.

It should be borne in mind that the list of judgments received from the definition of the Index includes, in principle, only the judgments having the thesis. It is by means of the index assigned to the judgment in question that a specific judgment is assigned to the password. So you can't find a case without it, that's from the index.

The search option for judgments associated with a specific password in Legalis is next to the search option for all judgments available through ‘Menu’. After selecting the button/ option “Passwords” the list of all passwords available in Legalis opens.

Simply specify that you are looking for judgments to get a list of judgments linked to a given password. It is possible to filter the list of passwords for specific returns. When searching for a phrase, with each other typed letter, the password list will narrow down.

The filter window works independently of the “Go to” window, which directly moves to a specific password.

A user who is looking for rulings related to a specific issue can also use the LEX available (defined as LEX Search) and Legalis main search engine and enter the corresponding phrase. The resulting list can be narrowed in both programmes, first by category of documents, including judgments, and then the received list of judgments can be further narrowed according to the numerous criteria available in the programmes:

• • „search for results” in Legalis, available in the left panel and “search for results” in LEX, available above the output list (allows you to enter an additional phrase sought in the case law that will appear on the result list),
• • the legalis and the LEX thesis (allows the list of judgments to be narrowed to or without the thesis),
• • jurisprudence in the Legalis programme (allows to determine whether the decision of the Polish court, European court or administration)
• • type of court/authority in the Legalis programme and equivalent in the LEX programme;
• • form in the Legalis programme, and in the LEX programme the type which allows to determine the form/type of the ruling (e.g. judgment, resolution, order, resolution),
• • information on where it was published, available in the Legalis programme under criterion ? publication, and in the LEX programme the publishing house,
• • the password to which it is assigned in the Legalis system, while in the LEX programme the field to which it is classified,
• • the date of the judgment available in both programmes.

In addition, in the Legalis programme, the list of the results of the judgments can be determined according to the criterion of the study and in the LEX programme according to two very useful criteria of newness and currentity.

first allows you to find decisions added to the programme within a certain time (in the last two or one a week), which allows you to keep up with new case law.

Assessment according to the validity of the rulings, however, allows verification of the validity of the ruling with the current legal status (more on this in the section concerning the rulings).

It is worth remembering that when searching for a ruling using full text search, you can use available (depending on the program) logical operators or special characters that allow you to build complex queries[17].

An even more precise search for judgments is a search for judgments linked to a specific legal act and with a specific legislative drafting unit (regulation). This is one the most commonly used by lawyers to reach judgments.

In LEX, the rulings are available at the link to the rulings of the courts available in the so-called menu of the unit, or "plusiku" located at the particular editorial unit of the legal act (prescription). It is worth knowing what rules are related to a given provision.

They are two the nature of the relationship between the judgments in question is linked by the so-called index, i.e. the provision assigned to the judgment in question, while the rulings are not linked to the provision in question by the fact that such a decision contains a link/call for the provision in question.

From the level of the whole legal act, the right panel in the "Related Documents" tab contains information on the number of judgments issued on the basis of different provisions of a specific legal act. Clicking on the link “Court rulings” available in “related documents” will open a list of decisions related to the legal act.

Of course, this list can also be further narrowed according to the criteria and filters indicated above and searched.

In order to display a list of judgments related to the provision in question in the Legalis programme, click on the “Plus” legal act at the editorial unit, meaning “Related Documents”, which includes a list of case law selected by the Legalis editorial board.

From this level it is possible to reach two the categories of judgments which have been or have not been applied. It is worth noting that by default, a list of judgments is opened.

In order to reach the rulings without either a full list of judgments linked to the provision in question, it is necessary to amend the narrowing criteria accordingly and to make it clear that it is also about the presentation or only of judgments without it.

This list can be further narrowed and filtered according to the criteria already indicated above.

If the user wants to keep up-to-date with the new case law, it is worth following the "Latest rulings" panel, available on the desktop of the start-up page of LEX. It can be placed in any part of the screen. Just a panel with the latest “stitch” and “drop” rulings in a convenient place on the desktop. It's not on Legalis.

Another, however, less popular way to search for judgments, available only in LEX, is the so-called shelf of vintages. Yearbooks are available from the “left task panel” on the start page of LEX. They allow searching for documents published in individual years, publication numbers or positions. one from the subcategories available in the Yearbooks are the rulings of the SN and the NSA (the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court). This is the category providing key SN and NSA rulings, published in the following collections:

• • The case law of the Supreme Administrative Court,
• • The case-law of the Chief Administrative Court and Provincial Administrative Courts,
• • Judgment of the Supreme Court Civil Chamber, • Judgment of the Supreme Court Disciplinary Chamber,
• • Case law of the Supreme Court Criminal and Military Chamber,
• • The case law of the Supreme Court Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs,
• • Case law of the Supreme Court Chamber of Labour, Social Insurance and Public Affairs.

Under the miniatures of each cover you can reach rulings from individual years. Finally, it is also worth mentioning that the way in which the judgments are reached seems to be underestimated through the links between them. This possibility exists in both LEX and Legalis from the level of content of a particular ruling.

Mutual relations between decisions, i.e. links with the rulings given in the same case, with the rulings cited and with the cited rulings allow for the finding of other similar decisions addressing the issue.

The links provide an opportunity to learn a broad spectrum of views of the case-law on a given subject, but also help to construct justifications for procedural documents. The ‘Decision on this matter’ report allows for the indication of other judgments in this case.

The relationship is presented in principle only if the content of the operative part of the ruling allows it. ‘ Quoting judgments’ are those in which a given judgment is referred, and the list of ‘ Quoted Judgments’ makes it possible to reach the rulings referred to in that judgment.

The latter can also be reached directly from the content of the ruling, through the links to the cited judgments.

In addition, the LEX programme contains the ‘Decision on this signature’, which is missing from the Legalis programme, which allows to show the relationship with decisions having the same signature, regardless of the date/type of the ruling or the seat/ type of court or administration.

The importance of copyright and other functionalities in the process of seeking judgments and working with case law

It certainly takes a long time to find decisions that fit the case. As the lawyers emphasize, this is often more time-consuming than writing a pleading. This is due, among other things, to the fact that judgments, and in particular the reasons, are usually very extensive.

So the lawyer needs to move very smoothly in these multipage texts (orders can count several, several or even several dozen pages) to find the necessary elements and arguments. Therefore, there is no doubt that the rulings with these are an improvement. Professional attorneys usually use them First,. Lawyers prefer to work with rulings.

In commercial systems (as indicated above), they are also presented in the lists as ‘basic’, meaning that they are in practice more visible. They are also more convenient in further analysis for the jurisprudence researcher, as they immediately allow a general understanding of what the ruling is about.

Thesis in the ruling is the main idea of the court. On the basis of the thesis, we can initially assess the subject of the ruling and whether it will be useful for us in a particular case. The rulings containing the guiding thought are commonly referred to as the judgments in question.

However, it should be noted that relying only on the rulings in question, and in particular the rulings themselves, without a detailed analysis of the context of a given thesis and the application of the court, can be unreliable. The fact that lawyers are becoming increasingly aware of this should be positively assessed. According to Dr.

Piotr Kładoczny: “It is worth remembering, however, that following the judgment alone can be misleading. Thesis may be too general, and then it does not allow to find exactly what the lawyer is looking for” 18 . So does mec.

Przemysław Rosati: “These rulings may help lawyers to work, but it must be remembered that the arguments contained in them most often refer to the facts of the ruling. It is often so that the thesis is too general, which gives rise to the threat of unauthorised building arguments on them.” 19 .

In addition, it is widely known that most of the rulings available in the databases do not, unfortunately, have any. Thus, focusing only on the rulings that have been cited gives rise to the risk of omitting important and sometimes even crucial proposals.

Currently, in commercial legal information systems, thesis is created by experts who, after reading the entire ruling, select several sentences containing a key interpretation of legal standards.

The arguments of the rulings are, in principle, excerpts, very often quotes from the justification, most often the legal justification of the court, including the reasoning of the court, which constitute a broad interpretation of the law. These may concern both substantive and procedural issues.

However, it should be borne in mind that the definition of thesis or its design has changed over time. In addition, it should be noted that the so-called copyright thesis, i.e. created by specialists to order commercial systems, and official thesis created most often by judges themselves and published in so-called official collections.

This fact is marked in commercial systems by indicating such a place or multiple places at the the thesis of the judgment.

The search criteria indicated above are precisely because of the relevance of the judgments to lawyers as well. Moreover, only the judgments are linked to specific slogans, that is, substantive issues. As indicated above, the substantive link in commercial systems occurs precisely through the so-called jurisprudence index.

Where decisions are linked to the provision in question, the decisions are promoted in a certain way, i.e. in LEX, they are presented at the beginning of the scoreboard, while in Legalis, only the judgments are presented by default under the rule.

It is also worth discussing the issue of the assessment of the current situation in the LEX programme, which is often misinterpreted even by professional lawyers. It should therefore be stressed that the assessment of the current situation, i.e.

compliance with the current legal status is subject to the thesis of judgments and not to the entire judgment. This is a more precise solution than the assessment of the validity of the ruling. This makes it possible for one e.g. two the ruling will also be valid, while second ‒ Nope.

The identification of the actuality of the interpretation documents is a very desirable feature of the legal information service, as it makes it easier to find information about the current state of the law, thereby speeding up work. This assessment of the thesis is not in Legalis.

Other forms of drafting of judgments may also help to analyse case law. The legal lines in the LEX programme or the legal lines in the Legalis programme, as well as the votes and other forms of drafting decisions, such as discussion in the LEX programme or the n.ius programme and the ius focus in the Legalis programme, must be mentioned.

The LEX jurisprudence lines are an author's document, whose task is to present, in a structured way, existing interpretative views of the judicial authorities (administrative bodies and courts) in the context of a specific legal issue.

The jurisprudence line in LEX does not serve to present the author's personal views; the author is tasked to collect, define and put together various positions of the judicial authorities (or to present a uniform position on a given issue) and then to describe the existing state in a concise manner.

The case-law lines therefore provide practical assistance to a professional proxy in disputes before a court. They present an abbreviated analysis of the current case law, indicating the dominant views and a brief summary of the expert; they also allow a review of the current case law views[20].

Court lines in LEX are available in many places. These can be found, among others, in resources in the so-called super category of documents, which are “Comments and publications”. Of course, you can reach them through the LEX Search search engine, but above all from the level of the editorial unit.

However, the basic way of reaching the case-law should be the content of a given ruling. Where a case law is assigned to a ruling in LEX, it is visible in the ‘Related Documents’ or in the dedicated LEX module The case law compass (more on LEX The case law compass later).

The equivalent of jurisprudence lines in Legalis are the so-called jurisprudence directions. Of course, there are some differences between the documents presented in the two competing information systems.

Voices are comments on decisions in which the author undertakes an assessment of the decision of the court. Voices published in Wolters Kluwer releases have full text in LEX. The other voices have only a metric. Data identifying the publication are presented at the top of the window.

Below is the grouping toolbar in four tabs the functions specific to the document. The text of the publication is visible in the central part of the window.

In the right part of the window, there are tabs: "Related Documents" containing links to materially related documents and "Keywords" containing links to the terms "Index" to which the document relates.

The author's approach of the voice to the content of the commented solution may be expressed by the word: acknowledgment/critical/partly critical. In addition, the voice may have the thesis.

It is important from the point of view of the lawyer's work with the case law that the vote is linked to the relation (link in the content or link in the related documents) with the judgment commented on[21].

In the LEX programme, another type of copyright publication that can support work with case law is discussed. This is a summary of the ruling allowing you to quickly read the content of the ruling.

The discussion may include: a description of the facts and the substance of the dispute and its settlement, and a description of the previous position of the administrative or judicial authority first instances.

The discussion does not include assessments of the decision or justification (which distinguishes them from the voice), but it has the so-called abstract and may have the thesis. Like the votes or the case-law lines discussed are related to the relation (link in content; link in related documents) to the judgment under discussion[22].

The equivalent of this category of document in the Legalis program is ius.focus, or summaries of key judgments.

At the end of this part, it is worth mentioning a few additional functionalities facilitating work with rulings. In LEX, it is possible to quote both the whole footnote of judgments and their extracts. From the “Document” tab the “Cite” icon is available, which is developing on two functions.

By selecting the option Quote, we open the full footnote window and can copy it to an external document. If you choose the option Quote a fragment, you should select a piece of content in advance and then use the option from the menu or context menu.

Then you will see a window with a completed quote and a full footnote that can be copied and used in any external text editor. The equivalent of this functionality is not in Legalis.

Where the text of the ruling is available in several languages, which refers primarily to European jurisprudence, the LEX tab “Language versions” is active, which allows the judgment to be shown in Polish, German, French or English.

Legalis does not have this functionality.

The legitimacy of the judgment is a very important feature to determine whether the position presented in the judgment will be contested.

In decisions for which there is information on their validity (this is usually the case for decisions of the administrative courts or NSAs obtained from CBOS), it is presented in the LEX programme just under the certificate of judgment[23]. If the date of validity of the judgment is known, it will also be displayed.

The fact that the judgment is not valid — does not mean that it is invalid, simply the status of such a judgment is indefinite for various reasons. There is no equivalent in Legalis.

However, in the case of universal court decisions, the LEX option is equivalent to that of a reference to a specific decision on the Universal Courts' Judgment Portal and concerns decisions on appeal courts and district courts which have been published on the Portal.

After clicking the icon Description of the decision, the new tab opens a page with a description of the decision and information on the validity, judgment available on the POSP. The Legalis programme, on the other hand, refers to the general page of the Portal of General Courts Cases.

Are new technologies (LegalTech) and predictive analysts or can be a cure for legal research problems?

The vast number of judgments, and in particular the avalanche increase in them and the long list of results in electronic databases, make the analysis of jurisprudence without technology support extremely time-consuming[24].

Working with rulings, as noted at the beginning of the chapter, is one from the basic and at the same time the most time-consuming activities of lawyers. Today, an extremely dynamic increase in judgments practically prevents their "hand" analysis. In this case, IT is necessary.

The solution is functionality and increasingly used mechanisms related to artificial intelligence.

In the case of commercial systems with legal information, the LEX Legislative Compass is an attempt to respond to the support of traditional case-law research with functionalities using the seeds of new technologies and accelerating work with judgments. It is released at the end 2020 module for the LEX program discussed above. The individual functions of the LEX Judicial Compasse for an efficient substantive research in the database of judgments are:

• • serial decisions,
• • similar decisions,
• • show the thesis,
• • expert selection[25].

Serial rulings are a group of judgments with almost identical content in terms of the operative part, the description of the facts and the legal justifications that have been grouped under a judgment appearing on the resulting list. They are marked on the right margin of a given item on this list.

They can be found in the list of judgments found in any of the above described ways. They cut down the score list and also clean it up. Moreover, they limit the risk of omission of relevant judgments, as the user does not have to verify the same content on several occasions and can concentrate on unique court applications.

Similar rulings are a group of decisions which are most closely related to the ruling under review. They are available from the right panel alongside the text of the ruling. Each similar judgment shall have a percentage of the similarity to the judgment under review.

A list of similar decisions can be narrowed according to various available criteria, e.g. the type of court, seat or type of judgment. In addition, it can be searched according to the occurrence of certain phrases. As a result, the lawyer gains a transparent division of decisions supporting both his own argument and the opposing party.

The expert's selection is an individual expert's collection of decisions which are substantively selected for the editorial unit as the basis for the ruling. An expert recommendation is available from the editorial unit menu. The choice of expert should be selected in the category Compasse. Upon clicking the function, a list of substantively selected judgments will be displayed. Recommended rulings are updated according to the procedure established with the expert.

The “Show thesis in justification” function is available from the open text of the ruling. Clicking this button will mark the thesis with a block in the justification and automatically display the view of this location on the screen. This allows the user to immediately verify the circumstances in which the view contained in the the thesis in question is expressed and to assess quickly whether the judgment and the arguments of the court in question fit the case.

The use of artificial intelligence (in practice they are usually machine learning or deep learning algorithms, with simultaneous processing of natural language processing, NLP) to create solutions to facilitate the use of extensive jurisprudence resources is very tempting, but undoubtedly still difficult.

Predictive analysts are also becoming increasingly popular in this area. This is still a new concept, but it is precisely in the case of large databases that it is gaining importance. This is the process of extracting information from existing data sets to determine patterns and predict future events and trends[26].

Intuitively, therefore, even those who do not do so on a daily basis, ideas arise of using predictive analysis to analyze current and historical data in rulings in order to forecast potential decisions or predictions of judicial decisions.[27].

There are several more or less successful attempts in the world to create such solutions. Usually In the first phase However, these are applications based either on a cut of the case law or on a limited thematic scope.

As an example, an attempt could be made to create a tool based on the processing of natural language to automatically anticipate (future) judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Average accuracy in the prediction of the infringement nine Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights 75% 28 .

Another, it seems quite familiar and often cited as an example of an attempt to use judicial resources to create a predictive solution in the area of justice is COMPAS. The experiment concerned an analysis of a number of factors affecting the phenomenon of recidivism.

The Automated Assessment of COMPAS was intended to provide decision-making support to the correction agencies for decisions on the location, management of perpetrators and treatment planning. The results show that predictive accuracy for the COMPAS hazard model ranged from 0.66 to 0.8 for different criminal subpopulations[29].

However, this study raised a problem of data and accepted to teach sample to ethnic groups. The results have therefore proved to be unreliable in this respect.

Another, this time a much more advanced and now commercial solution based on jurisprudence resources, which uses artificial intelligence algorithms, is a solution that can be described as litigation intelligence Solomonic.

The product is based on machine learning supported by expert input from practitioners who analyse one thousand lawsuits, documents and court proceedings before the Supreme Court of Great Britain and provide data for analysis of the result of which the target recipient is to receive answers, for example, to questions: “What are our chances?”, “How long will it take?”, “How long will it cost?”.

The data enable analysis of the activities of experts and lawyers and evaluation of the preferences of judges, creating a fuller picture of all factors affecting judicial proceedings[30].

Currently, the most advanced work on predictive analytics, the use of artificial intelligence in the wider area of legal research and existing systems in this area operate in the United States.

The following applications can be distinguished here: ROSS Intelligence 31 , who has suspended operations (since the day 31 January 2021 Ross platform is no longer available) 32 , CaseText 33 or Westlaw Edge 34 , which among American lawyers are very popular.

At the end of this part it is also worth mentioning the solution, which is LEX Machina, which seems to be quite an advanced product. The official website says: “Lex Machina has developed a unique process that combines natural language processing and machine learning with legal expertise.

It is used to read and extract detailed, practice-specific information, including time limits, case settlements, damages granted, remedies, findings and others 35 ”.

As far as national solutions are concerned, for the moment in Poland there is a lack of a comprehensive, AI-based solution for conducting or supporting case-law research. It can be mentioned at this point that such an attempt was to create an IUS.AI solution.

The idea behind the solution was that once the search engine entered any legal question or passage of fact, the algorithm was to indicate the passages of judgments that are related to or directly respond to that inquiry. The system was supposed to allow lawyers to find legal sources without having to analyse documentation or case law.

This would enable a lawyer to give up the search method used today, i.e. after key words or filters. This requires a lawyer to have a preliminary legal analysis. In the case of IUS.AI this was to be done by the machine. In the end, after the tests carried out in several law firms, the solution could not be placed on the market[36].

This example confirms how difficult it is to create such a solution. The main factors and barriers on the Polish market appear primarily to be data, in particular their lack of data and the specificity of the Polish language.

Presumably supporting the work of a lawyer with technology is not just the future, it's a necessity. This is also confirmed by the conclusions of the Future Ready Lawyer Report 2021.

In the shadow of a pandemic.’ The publication indicates that the legal sector sees digital transformation and technology as key elements for achieving better results, including higher quality services, efficiency and efficiency[37]. In those areas where artificial intelligence manages more effectively, it is worth using its help.

However, as the examples mentioned above show, for the time being (mainly on the European market and in particular Polish) are residual solutions, first tests more or less successful.

In addition to the mentioned limitations (e.g. data, language specifics, technological barriers, etc.) it is worth noting that the development of this type of application may be hampered by legal regulations.

For example, regulations in France that prohibit the publication of statistical information on judges’ decisions – imposing penalties on five years in prison as a maximum punishment for anyone who breaks the new law[38].

In developing solutions based on artificial intelligence, account should also be taken of legal requirements or guidelines related to the broad explainability.

Summary

In conclusion, it should be stressed once again that the vast number of judgments, even their avalanche increase, as highlighted at the beginning, and consequently the examination of long lists of results from case law in electronic databases, make the analysis of case law extremely time-consuming.

One can risk saying that without the support of technology it becomes almost impossible. Therefore, it is not worth defending itself against the application of new technologies and solutions that they offer and at the same time improve the process of case-law research.

On the other hand, However, it is also worth to make the most of existing (sometimes for many years) solutions and functionalities in public but, above all, commercial programmes with legal information.

So it is worth making some effort to learn about their possibilities to save time in the future for searching for and analysing judgments.

____________________

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This text comes from the publication New Technologies in Lawyer's Practice, edited by Patryk Ciurak, Grzegorz Wierczyński, Arche publishing house, Palester Library, 2021