Wojciech Cyrul’s research while affiliated with Jagiellonian University and other places

The tabular structure of legal texts and the principles of their drafting result in the frequent use of various types of references, which has a negative impact on the comprehensibility of the law. As legal texts are nowadays drafted and made available in electronic format, it is reasonable to try to develop automated mechanisms for checking the correctness of references contained in these texts. The paper shows how a particular type of automated and dedicated information management mechanisms, offered by the so-called adaptive hypertexts, can be used for this purpose. The authors focus primarily on describing the specificity of this type of tools and on analyzing the possibilities, principles and prospects of their use in order to improve the quality of legal texts, in particular their comprehensibility.

LegalTech 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, Tokenization, smart contract, AI, Eu ID. The use of technological solutions, increasingly often referred to as LegalTech, in the administration of justice is nowadays necessary. It is impossible to imagine courts functioning without information systems or law firms not using electronic databases of case law and legal literature. However, technology is developing further and starting to go beyond the comfort zone of traditional legal services. Solutions are appearing which can and sometimes do replace people in tasks which people used to deal with not so long ago. Such solutions are e.g. those based on artificial intelligence, resulting in various algorithms functioning in practice, not always understandable for statistical users of legal services. This is, among other reasons, why in many aspects the use of the LegalTech tool raises significant doubts and leads to many unavoidable questions, including: Will traditional lawyers survive? Will robots and automatons replace us? Will artificial intelligence replace us in providing legal advice, creating contracts or issuing judgments? Is the effectiveness of LegalTech tools greater than the work of traditional lawyers? Or perhaps we are irreplaceable, irremovable and have nothing to worry about, and the role of the lawyer will not change? Of course, such and similar questions can be multiplied, and the answer to them basically boils down to explaining what the various LegalTech tools are, whether and how to implement them, and whether it is necessary or just useful? In this monograph we try to explore this research area and to bring the reader closer to the next stage of development of law, which more and more courageously uses various technological tools. Undoubtedly, the previously separate “worlds” of law, engineering, information technology and technology have come together in everyday life. Traditionally, the law regulated technical issues, defined technical standards, influenced the way IT systems were built or operated, including Internet platforms, while engineers followed the advice or opinions of lawyers. It was the law and lawyers who regulated technology and indicated the directions of implementation. However, the last stage of the digital revolution has quite significantly changed this situation, resulting in the equalization of law and technology, and thus the influence of lawyers on engineers. Increasingly, engineering is entering a domain that until recently was reserved exclusively for lawyers, and information systems are effectively replacing the work of a lawyer. In some aspects, such as Blockchain orBitcoin, engineering has even overtaken the law, forcing lawyers to learn, pioneered research directions and forced new, necessary regulations on the market. And, as you might think, more challenges lie ahead, and there is no turning back from the digital road. It is the time of algorithms, the time of legal technologization, the time of LegalTech. Therefore, the aim of our research is not only to indicate how the law and the lawyer's work is changing now, but also how much this area will change in the coming years. The book is an effect of scientific research of an inter-university team of an international group of scientists dealing with problems of new technologies and law in the aspect of digital economy 3.0 and economy 4.0. The first results of the team's work have already been published in Polish as part of the publication “LegalTech. Czyli jak bezpiecznie z narzędzi IT w organizacji, w tym w kancelarii oraz dziale prawnym” (LegalTech. How to safely use IT tools in an organisation, including a law firm and a legal department), published by C.H. Beck (Warsaw 2021). The current publication is a slightly revised and updated version of the Polish book, which also includes new texts and a new perspective on the rapidly changing technological reality that surrounds us. The publication is divided into two parts. The first part is more theoretical and explains the basic aspects and legal framework of technological tools, while the second part presents LegalTech solutions functioning in selected countries around the world. In the first part, we reflect on the limits of technology, algorithms and various possibilities of applying LegalTech tools in practice. In turn, in the second part, we show how particular legislators have applied technological possibilities and how this has improved the work of their judiciary. Undoubtedly, our publication does not explain all aspects of technological tools in the administration of justice. However, we believe that it can provide a voice in the discussion on the current and future shape of the legal services market. Therefore, we encourage you to discuss it with us. Since the work has a collective character, it should be emphasised here that the individual authors represent their own views. The fact that in such a group we do not always agree on a particular thought, in our opinion, only proves that we are open to other views, and the law is only the art of interpretation, for which in the changing technological reality, there is much room.We must add that the publication was financed within the framework of a scientific project conducted at the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow Academy. 30.06.2021 Krakow, Dariusz Szostek, Mariusz Załucki

Modern research on lawmaking in electronic format confirms the thesis that legal texts made available by means of various types of legal information systems form a hypertext structure. Furthermore, research on hypertexts confirms that the use of this technology undermines the structuralist theories of text that underlie traditional methods of legislation and interpretation of law. In this article, an attempt is made to show how a hypertext can be used to provide legal information and how it can affect traditional legal practices connected with drafting and interpreting legal texts. In particular, the considerations will focus on the analysis of the use of hypertext for the processing of legal documents (including digital representation of legal texts) and the possibilities that arise in this area in connection with the development of the so-called adaptive hypertexts. On this ground the question is analyzed whether and, if so, to what extent and in what way an adaptive hypertext can be used for the presentation and analysis of legal texts.

http://wydawnictwo.iws.gov.pl/produkt/identyfikacja-podmiotow-prawnych-w-obrocie-cyfrowym/

http://wydawnictwo.iws.gov.pl/produkt/identyfikacja-podmiotow-prawnych-w-obrocie-cyfrowym/

The article analyses the possibility of applying immune-like processing of legal texts in the legislative process. It also discusses the required format for recording legal information and the relationships between the formats for recording legal information and the methods used to analyse it. On this ground we argue that the formal analysis of a legal text must extend beyond its logical consistency. This is so due to the fact that the quality of legislation depends not only on the lack of internal contradictions within a legal text but also on the number of requirements a legal text has to meet. Legislation should not only be consistent but also coherent, uniform and comprehensible. This requires, inter alia, consistent terminology, a lack of redundancy, appropriate references and compliance with the requirements set forth in the principles of legislation . In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims legislators are beginning to apply new tools to complement traditional approaches. As a consequence, legal drafting is nowadays aided by various information and communication technologies usually based on classic editing tools and algorithms for text processing. However, due to deficiencies in already existing solutions it is important to consider using novel, adaptive and specially dedicated algorithms, which would allow for similarity analyses of legal texts and in particular would detect patterns, relationships or coincidences in their content and structure. Such algorithms can be based on computational intelligence, and more specifically on artificial immune systems . As a consequence, the article will discuss both the scope of application and the capacity of tools based upon the idea of natural immune systems as means of increasing the quality of legislation .

In the paper, problems of legal information digitalization are investigated. Conditions for extraction information from legal texts (i.a. normative acts) related to the common ones processing (non-legal terms, in English) are outlined. Problems of dimensionality reduction and application of similarity measures are discussed. Sample results of similarity analysis is presented. Further research aimed at semantic analysis of legal texts are outlined.

The following paper discusses from the textological perspective the concept of text of law. It is argued that the Dworkin’s metaphor of a chain novel is not appropriate to explain the textuality of law, because the text of law is a specific form of feeding text, distinctive from the classical ones, i.e. monolog and dialog. Its characteristic resembles hypertexts rather than novels. Based on this, the distinction between consistency and coherence is presented and their roles are analysed. Finally, the relationship between intertextuality and coherence of the law is interpreted and explained.