Loge–expert

Abstract

1. Law is more than statutes or Court decisions. Statutes and Court decisions constitute the written expression of a legal system, but a legal system is driven by actors who deploy explicit and implicit principles and rules which give diverse meanings to statutes and decisions. To be accurate an expert system in law must take this characteristic into account. This, however makes it much more complex to build. 2. A second consideration respective to expert systems in law is that they should be formulated to clearly specify who the end user will be. Building an expert system in law for legal expert users is different from building it for laymen users. 3. A thiid consideration should focus on the purpose of an expert system in law. Is it designed for legal decision-making, for legal problem-solving or for the dissemination of legal information? These do not present the same challenges and the choice should be made clear at the start. Our experiment in developing Loge-experL an expert system in Qu&ec Housing Law, gave us the opportunity to deal with these considerations. Since a smal-scale model of Loge-expert is now ready to be tested in the real world, we are interested in sharing the observations we have drawn from its development and elaborating the direction we are now following in order to fulfill our initial aims. In our paper we will fist present what Loge-expert is. Secondly we will point out the limitations of Loge-expert and the solutions we are working on to overcome them.