PhD Study : Applying Natural Language Processing to the automated fact checking of legal documents

Summary

A prospectus is a document by a corporation containing information on the character, nature, and purpose of an issue of shares, debentures, or other corporate Securities that extends an invitation to the public to purchase the securities.  It must contain all material facts relating to the company and its operations so that a prospective investor can make an informed decision as to the merit of the investment. An important aspect of a law firm’s work is the verification of the facts of each prospectus. Currently, this is an intensive manual task.

Given the large volume of data available in many of these prospectuses, the manual validation of facts can become unfeasible. This supports the requirement for research into tools to enable rapid accurate fact checking and contribute to time-savings in legal fact checking [1]. The aim is to extract and verify each fact in these legal texts and to create a broad set of enabling tools to assist legal workers in the verification of relevant facts. Knowledge acquisition rules, based on the linguistic treatment of specific aspects of legal documents will be key to improving the results in this task. Additionally, domain knowledge representation can provide an even broader set of possibilities. This research will create language models for addressing Information Extraction from texts in the legal domain combined with external publicly accessible document silos to verify statements. Automatic fact checking of legal documents allows for improvements in legal information retrieval system effectiveness [2-4]. However, there are still important issues to overcome so that these tools can fully meet their initial demands. One of these issues is related to the correct identification and representation of legal statements. Previous work is limited by an approach based on text processing without using important relationship descriptions available in the domain knowledge of the legal context and linguistic information. Even with initiatives, whose approach incorporates linguistic aspects in their design, it can be noted, however, that domain knowledge has not been incorporated.

Essential criteria

Applicants should hold, or expect to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class Honours Degree in a subject relevant to the proposed area of study.

We may also consider applications from those who hold equivalent qualifications, for example, a Lower Second Class Honours Degree plus a Master’s Degree with Distinction.

In exceptional circumstances, the University may consider a portfolio of evidence from applicants who have appropriate professional experience which is equivalent to the learning outcomes of an Honours degree in lieu of academic qualifications.

• Experience using research methods or other approaches relevant to the subject domain

Desirable Criteria

If the University receives a large number of applicants for the project, the following desirable criteria may be applied to shortlist applicants for interview.

• First Class Honours (1st) Degree
• Masters at 70%
• For VCRS Awards, Masters at 75%
• Publications - peer-reviewed

Funding and eligibility

The University offers the following levels of support:

Vice Chancellors Research Studentship (VCRS)

The following scholarship options are available to applicants worldwide:

• Full Award: (full-time tuition fees + £19,000 (tbc))
• Part Award: (full-time tuition fees + £9,500)
• Fees Only Award: (full-time tuition fees)

These scholarships will cover full-time PhD tuition fees for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance) and will provide a £900 per annum research training support grant (RTSG) to help support the PhD researcher.

Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Please note: you will automatically be entered into the competition for the Full Award, unless you state otherwise in your application.

Department for the Economy (DFE)

The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the Home rate and a maintenance allowance of £19,000 (tbc) per annum for three years (subject to satisfactory academic performance).

This scholarship also comes with £900 per annum for three years as a research training support grant (RTSG) allocation to help support the PhD researcher.

• Candidates with pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, who also satisfy a three year residency requirement in the UK prior to the start of the course for which a Studentship is held MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance.
• Republic of Ireland (ROI) nationals who satisfy three years’ residency in the UK prior to the start of the course MAY receive a Studentship covering fees and maintenance (ROI nationals don’t need to have pre-settled or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme to qualify).
• Other non-ROI EU applicants are ‘International’ are not eligible for this source of funding.
• Applicants who already hold a doctoral degree or who have been registered on a programme of research leading to the award of a doctoral degree on a full-time basis for more than one year (or part-time equivalent) are NOT eligible to apply for an award.

Due consideration should be given to financing your studies. Further information on cost of living