Abstract

Law is a research-orientated profession and legal research is an activity that cost time and money. Information Technology is now revolutionising the way in which legal research is being done. In this work, we have implemented a web-based question answer and information retrieval system for the Mauritian Judiciary. On the www.lawanswers.me portal, users can enter their queries freely using natural language. The system processes the query by extracting the relevant keywords and discard those that do not carry much information and then returns the relevant sections of law which contains these keywords or keyphrases. The system also returns a list of relevant Supreme Court cases. The user can decide on the number of results to be displayed. The user can also wish to have only the name of the relevant acts be displayed for certain keywords or keyphrases. The system does not require the user to know how the law is structured or how the knowledge-base is built in order to benefit from it. The portal can also be accessed via mobile devices without compromising any of its facilities or user-friendliness. It is hoped that the availability of information at the click of a button will help the human resources at the Mauritian Judiciary to become more efficient and this will contribute to the reduction of delays in the disposal of cases. As the old adage goes, ''justice delayed is justice denied'. The main objectives of the proposed system were as follows: • To create a database of statutes of the Republic of Mauritius; • To create a database of past cases; • To create a database of other legal materials such as statistical reports; • To develop a software, using an appropriate programming language, to allow a user to ask a question and gets a short and concise answer within a few seconds; • To evaluate the answers produced by the system; • To identify potential weaknesses of the system and to correct them; • To disseminate the appropriate knowledge to relevant stakeholders