CourtNav: Voice-Guided, Anchor-Accurate Navigation of Long Legal Documents in Courtrooms

TL;DR

CourtNav is a voice-guided legal document navigator that enables judges to quickly locate specific passages in long PDFs, significantly reducing navigation time and improving efficiency in courtroom settings.

Contribution

This paper introduces CourtNav, a novel voice-activated system combining grammar-based intent classification and hybrid indexing for precise, anchor-based navigation in lengthy legal documents.

Findings

Median navigation time reduced from 3-5 minutes to 10-15 seconds.

Navigation accuracy and speed improved with anchor-based highlighting.

System maintains evidence verifiability and transparency.

Abstract

Judicial work depends on close reading of long records, charge sheets, pleadings, annexures, orders, often spanning hundreds of pages. With limited staff support, exhaustive reading during hearings is impractical. We present CourtNav, a voice-guided, anchor-first navigator for legal PDFs that maps a judge's spoken command (e.g., "go to paragraph 23", "highlight the contradiction in the cross-examination") directly to a highlighted paragraph in seconds. CourtNav transcribes the command, classifies intent with a grammar-first(Exact regex matching), LLM-backed router classifying the queries using few shot examples, retrieves over a layout-aware hybrid index, and auto-scrolls the viewer to the cited span while highlighting it and close alternates. By design, the interface shows only grounded passages, never free text, keeping evidence verifiable and auditable. This need is acute in India, where judgments and cross-examinations are notoriously long.In a pilot on representative charge sheets, pleadings, and orders, median time-to-relevance drops from 3-5 minutes (manual navigation) to 10-15 seconds; with quick visual verification included, 30-45 seconds. Under fixed time budgets, this navigation-first design increases the breadth of the record actually consulted while preserving control and transparency.