Abstract
The contract review process can be a costly and time-consuming task for lawyers and clients alike, requiring significant effort to identify and evaluate the legal implications of individual clauses. To address this challenge, we propose the use of natural language processing techniques, specifically text classification based on deontic tags, to streamline the process. Our research question is whether natural language processing techniques, specifically dense vector embeddings, can help semi-automate the contract review process and reduce time and costs for legal professionals reviewing deontic modalities in contracts. In this study, we create a domain-specific dataset and train both baseline and neural network models for contract sentence classification. This approach offers a more efficient and cost-effective solution for contract review, mimicking the work of a lawyer. Our approach achieves an accuracy of 0.90, showcasing its effectiveness in identifying and evaluating individual contract sentences.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the following individuals who took time out of their busy schedules to manually annotate contracts: Andrene Hutchinson, K. Teddison Maye-Jackson, Odane Lennon, Ryan Gordon and Tishanna Maxwell.
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Graham, S.G., Soltani, H. & Isiaq, O. Natural language processing for legal document review: categorising deontic modalities in contracts. Artif Intell Law (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-023-09379-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-023-09379-2