Legal Profession Commons^™

Flying The Flag, Aaron S. Kirschenfeld

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

This paper analyzes the accuracy with which descriptions of subsequent negative treatment are applied by an online citator system that employs a hierarchical controlled vocabulary -- Shepard's Citations -- as opposed to one that does not -- KeyCite. After a contextual review of the citator's history, a framework for assessment is proposed and employed to test the hypothesis that a citator employing a hierarchical controlled vocabulary would produce more accurate descriptions. The study's results suggest that a system making use of a hierarchical controlled vocabulary does apply descriptions of subsequent negative treatment in a marginally more accurate way. A discussion …