Problem Statements

October 13  2016
  • October 14  2016

Please stay tuned in for more information on the data sets for the "featured" problem statements.

1). Visualizing Q&A (FEATURED)

Product Liability Navigator will be a one-stop workflow and analytics solution that connects users to editorially curated question and answer sets, Lexis Advance content and products, and scientific content from Elsevier and public sources. It will be based on the concept and framework set forth in MedMal Navigator.
Product Liability Navigator will have an interface which walks users through a multitude of (editorially crafted) questions and answers to provide guidance on complicated research that must be done to litigate their Product Liability cases. This data is structured in a question and answer format, with a "why is this important" section/pop-up accompanying the questions that provides additional information, links to Lexis content, links to the web, and links to pre-crafted queries on LA with filters. We need a compelling visualization (such as via Neo4j) that users can navigate, search, skip around in, but ultimately use to get to the information they need (ie - the correct question and answer set and/or "why is this important" section within the data).

Product Manager: Mark Koussa
Technical Contact: Brian Rambacher

2).Reading is OUT, Interacting is IN (FEATURED)

Let's not beat around the bush - no one wants to read large documents anymore, especially using mobile devices or cell phones.
So, all the brochures, users manuals, hand books, training materials, and documents are starting to gather digital dust.
Article for reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/turning-documents-chatbots-riza-c-berkan-ph-d/
In Lexis Advance, there many features that can be used to assist with searching, saving and exploring all of the legal content that LexisNexis has available, but users often don't know how to use them effectively.
The help system for Lexis Advance has a great deal of information that could assist them, but its not integrated with the application and requires some knowledge of what you're looking for.
How might we use a conversational user interface (like a chatbot) that could be integrated with Lexis Advance directly to help users get the needed information from our Lexis Advance help system.

Product Manager: Mike Etgen
Technical Contact: Robin Stubbart

3).Visualizing the Case Network (FEATURED)

In order to effectively analyze a legal case, legal researchers must have quick access to all the subsequent rulings that cite the case they are analyzing.
Subsequent rulings can have a supportive or destructive effect on any case, which makes it a necessity to understand the citing network.
Given a set of case law with citation information, create a network map showing the citation linkages between cases.

Contacts: Rick McFarland, Zack Bennett

4).Who can make the best Classifier! (FEATURED)

Topical organization is an essential part of facilitating legal research.
Lexis has invested heavily over the years in constructing a legal taxonomy (USLT, or US Legal Taxonomy).
The USLT contains a hierarchical graph of legal research topics that reflects our users' understanding of legal research.
Lexis has also built many tools for categorizing documents to topics in the legal taxonomy, so content can be easily tagged with topics.
Given a set of case law headnotes (points of law) with assigned USLT topics, create your own topic classifier on our training data and then let's compare it to ours on a test data set.
Let's see who can beat ours by the most percentage points!

Contacts: Rick McFarland, Zack Bennett

5).Making Search into a Conversation (FEATURED)

Conversational user interfaces are becoming increasingly used for a variety of research needs.
Some are voice-activated (such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Now), but many are text-oriented chatbots appearing as assistants in the context of a larger application.
At Lexis, text chatbots are being considered for providing help in using our products, but also for improving the legal research experience
Given a set of case law and judge data, answer research questions using a text-oriented, conversational interface.
For instance, if a user asks "List cases for Judge Lucy Koh", the system would respond with a list of cases where Judge Koh is listed as a presiding judge.

Contacts: Rick McFarland, Zack Bennett

6).Choose Your Own Adventure

Great innovations can come from anywhere, and our 2017 hackers surely have plenty of their own.
Create an innovative solution for a LexisNexis product (current or new).
Ideally the solution should not be on the product backlog or roadmap.
The idea is your own take on future of the product or market need. No idea is too big or too small, as long as it scratches a real itch.
Feel free to use any technologies, any LexisNexis product, or a combination of things.
Mobile Apps, Data Visualizations, Chatbots, Voice Recognition (Alexa, Google Home), Virtual Reality, Web Apps, Digital Media, etc...
Choose your own problem to solve and convince us of your future vision!

Contacts: Loai Alsalti, Mike Etgen