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Computer-aided Drafting of Legal Documents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Charles S. Saxon
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Abstract

Beginning with a survey of the application of computers to the law—how they are used now and how expected to be used in the future—this article presents a model of computerized document drafting systems and describes the capabilities such systems must have. A description of a template document that will specify the content, the form, and the rules for completing a class of documents is followed by a discussion identifying the facilities a document designer needs to specify such a template document, which in effect defines the language needed for the template design. A simple, easily implemented template drafting language (TDL) and a prototype software system (ADD) that can assemble documents drafted in this language have been designed and used to create security agreements drafted in accordance with Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Bar Foundation Research Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Summer 1982 , pp. 685 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1982 

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References

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28 In table 1, for example, a person is the object, the occupation is a characteristic of a person, and the dates of birth and death give the time of a person's existence, LEGOL permits one to redefine a statute as an equation containing special LEGOL operators that “operate” upon tables such as this one to produce new tables. For example, one statute might define who in this table is entitled by law to receive what level of social security pension.Google Scholar

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37 Id. at 1364 (list adapted from a fuller presentation).Google Scholar

38 Id. at 1398.Google Scholar

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44 Two law review comments survey part of the area described herein and assess the impact of computers on the legal profession. Comment, The Impact of Computers on the Legal Profession, 30 Baylor L. Rev. 829 (1978) examines legal searching, litigation support, discovery of opponent's computer information, and admissibility of computer data. Comment, Emerging Computer-Assisted Legal Analysis Systems, 1980 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 116 compares Popp and Schlink's JUDITH system, Sprowl's ABF system, McCarty's TAXMAN system, and Meldman's proposal.Google Scholar

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52 For those not familiar with structured programming, it is a set of rules analogous to the rules governing the writing of an article—rules that require the article to be organized in outline form with each main subdivision subdivided into minor subdivisions, which themselves are subdivided, and so on.Google Scholar

53 Sequential execution is executing statements in the order in which they appear in the program. This is the natural way that execution occurs in most languages.Google Scholar

54 Conditional execution is executing a statement or series of statements only if some condition is satisfied and otherwise skipping past statements. The condition that determines whether a statement will be executed is evaluated by the computer as the program is running, thus the program can respond in different ways at different runnings.Google Scholar

55 Repetitious execution is executing a statement or series of statements repeatedly until some condition is satisfied. The condition is tested during each repetition.Google Scholar

56 That is, unless there is some indication that statements should be executed conditionally or repeatedly they should, by default, be executed only once or as they are stored.Google Scholar

57 The string operation concatenation is putting two character strings together, one after the other, to form one string.Google Scholar

58 String searching is searching through the characters of a character string for a specific sequence of characters.Google Scholar

59 Incremeting is increasing the value of a count by one; decrementing is decreasing the value of a count by one.Google Scholar

60 There is no output command, such as WRITE or PRINT in these languages. Any text that appears in the program without other commands is presumed to be text that is to become part of the final document.Google Scholar

61 Occasionally it is required that text not flow into the document even though it appears in a situation that would normally so require. The language must provide some way to suppress the automatic transfer into the draft document of any selected part of the template document text.Google Scholar

62 For those familiar with the language definition scheme known as BNF (Backus-Naur form) the following is a formal definition of the syntax of the TDL language. In this definition: = represents “is defined as” and | represents “or alternatively.” For an explanation of BNF language definition see Frank G. Pagan, Formal Specification of Programming Languages: A Panoramic Primer 7–21 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981). A complete description of the semantics of the TDL language is presented in Charles S. Saxon, Computer Aided Drafting of Legal Documents, at 82–83 (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981, available through University Microfilms International, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48106).Google Scholar

63 The following example illustrates the use of the /WHILE statement:Google Scholar

[/- “*Name each of your children”]Google Scholar

[/- MP =“Are there any more children? y or n: “]Google Scholar

[/ - NP =“What is the child's name?”/1 =0]Google Scholar

[/ - /WHILE MORE#“n”/DO /I + NAME/1:NP MORE:MP]. I have [/I] children named:. [/ - COM =””/2 = 0]Google Scholar

[/WHILE /1#/2 /DO /- /2 +/+ COM NAME/2 /- COM =“, “].Google Scholar

This template document, when processed, produces the following dialog between the user and the system:Google Scholar

Name each of your childrenGoogle Scholar

What is the child's name? CharlieGoogle Scholar

Are there any more children? y or n: yGoogle Scholar

What is the child's name? JimmyGoogle Scholar

Are there any more children? y or n: nGoogle Scholar

and ultimately generates the following document:Google Scholar

I have 2 children named:Google Scholar

Charlie, JimmyGoogle Scholar

Here the prompts “Are there any more …” and “What is …” have been assigned to the variables MP and NP merely for convenience. Counter one is used to count the entries made by the user, and the total count is retained after the entering of the children's names has stopped. The construction NAME/1 indicates that the variables NAME01, NAME02, NAME03 and so on are to be formed from the prefix NAME and the value of counter one. Later, these same names are referenced using counter two. In the first /WHILE statement, counter one is incremented before the child name question is asked, and it has a value equal to the number of children when the user indicates that there are no more children's names to be entered. In the second /WHILE statement, counter two assumes the same values counter one did in the first /WHILE statement. The variable COM is initially two blank spaces. This variable is assigned a value equal to a comma and a space each time the /WHILE statement is executed, and this altered value is used to separate all subsequent names from their predecessors.Google Scholar

64 The following illustration reveals how an extensive amount of variable and fixed text can be repeated an indefinite number of times, depending on the answers given by the user of the template document:Google Scholar

[/- “*The information for each child must be entered individually”]Google Scholar

[/WHILE MORE#“n”/DO /3+/+/INSERT “CHILD”. /- MORE: “Any more children? y or n: “]Google Scholar

Each time the child file is repeated, counter three contains the number of the current child. This may be used by the inserted file to save values for later use by the main program.Google Scholar

65 The operation of such a system by a nonlawyer might be considered unauthorized practice of law. See Thomas, Bart T., Unauthorized Practice and Computer Aided Legal Analysis Systems, 20 Jurimetrics J. 41 (1979).Google Scholar

66 The problems associated with the drafting of security agreements are discussed in Boyd, William E. & Saxon, Charles S., The A-9: A Program for Drafting Security Agreements Under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, 1981 A.B.F. Res. J. 637.Google Scholar

67 An example of the automatic production of the financing statements is shown in Id. at 668–69.Google Scholar