NLP in the Legal Profession: How about Small Languages?

Abstract

Over the last three decades legal service providers as well as legal departments of various firms have embraced the opportunity to apply the latest digital technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work. Since language is central to both law-making and during the application of the law, Natural Language Processing solutions have found their way to this profession. One particular research area relates to the issue of small languages. The problem is rooted in the size of the population speaking a given language: in a small market, it is not economically feasible to develop NLP technologies as they require considerable time and effort to develop a sufficient language corpus. This paper reviews the challenges countries and jurisdictions of small languages face in light of increasing NLP applications in legal contexts, while also examining the role of the public sector in relation to addressing such issues.