Exploring Case Law :: Reasonably Polymorphic
In early 2021, spurred on by many discussions with my incredible, law-student (among many other fantastic characteristics) girlfriend, I decided to try my hand at analyzing Canada’s legal system. Absolutely everything I know about the law I’ve learned from TV shows and a year’s worth of hanging out with law students — which is to say, I don’t know anything.
Oh yeah, and also I don’t know anything about data science or visualization. I’m a computer scientist by trade, and can navigate my way around complicated mathematics better than your average Joe. This projected seemed like a good opportunity to teach myself some of the more obscure bits of graph theory, interactive web design (most of the charts on this page are interactive,) data scraping and subsequent mining.
These are not half-bad results, if I do say so myself. And if one guy who doesn’t really know how to use this technology can do this well, imagine how much damage someone with high-quality data, a budget, and knowledge could do. If you are in the legal field and aren’t yet positioning yourself for the upcoming automation wave, maybe this essay will help convince you that the system isn’t nearly as robust to automation as you might think. I did all of this in two weeks, as an outsider, with no domain knowledge. That should scare you.
