Topic Classification of Case Law Using a Large Language Model and a New Taxonomy for UK Law: AI Insights into Summary Judgment

TL;DR

This study develops a new taxonomy for UK law and demonstrates that a large language model can classify summary judgment cases with high accuracy, revealing legal trends and aiding legal analytics.

Contribution

Introduces a novel taxonomy for UK law and applies a large language model to classify legal cases, enhancing legal analytics and understanding of judicial patterns.

Findings

Claude 3 Opus achieved 87.13% accuracy in classification

The taxonomy improves understanding of legal themes in summary judgments

AI can effectively assist in legal case classification

Abstract

This paper addresses a critical gap in legal analytics by developing and applying a novel taxonomy for topic classification of summary judgment cases in the United Kingdom. Using a curated dataset of summary judgment cases, we use the Large Language Model Claude 3 Opus to explore functional topics and trends. We find that Claude 3 Opus correctly classified the topic with an accuracy of 87.13% and an F1 score of 0.87. The analysis reveals distinct patterns in the application of summary judgments across various legal domains. As case law in the United Kingdom is not originally labelled with keywords or a topic filtering option, the findings not only refine our understanding of the thematic underpinnings of summary judgments but also illustrate the potential of combining traditional and AI-driven approaches in legal classification. Therefore, this paper provides a new and general taxonomy for UK law. The implications of this work serve as a foundation for further research and policy discussions in the field of judicial administration and computational legal research methodologies.