Artificial intelligence techniques have found a rich area of experimentation in the field of Law. For many years now, the ex IDG and the international scientific community have been researching into Law with the goal of translating into computing models aspects of legal knowledge and reasoning.

Research on artificial intelligence and Law can be considered a completion of those cognitive psychology models that analyze the mental process of jurists and enquire into social behavioral mechanisms with respect to laws, rules and regulations. The result is a new "pragmatic" view of Law characterized by the "scientificity" of the analytical method: information technology forces jurists to make explicit those mental structures that are the basis of their reasoning.

At this stage of research, the Institute favors, amongst the practical objectives to which these results are directed, the production of legal documents and the teaching of law. The first point regards the perfecting of textual, structural and rhetorical models on which to base systems for aiding the drafting of judicial acts; the second, deals with systems that can train students to "manage" Law, (for example by classifying laws on the grounds of their function and to analyze them not according to their systematic nature but through their logical relationship with the single case, to examine cases starting with factual elements, to construct arguments starting with facts and jurisprudential precedents.)

The ex Istituto per la Documentazione Giuridica has promoted research projects, has contributed and offered its experience at all the major scientific turning-points in this field, and has over the years organized conferences which have been supported by the most important international scholars in this field.

Cognitive models for the extraction and elaboration of legal knowledge (from )
Responsible: Elio Fameli

Singling out of theoretical foundations and analysis of the methodological problems connected to the designing and development of systems for the extraction, representation and elaboration of legal knowledge.

JurWordNet, semantic web of legal terminology (from 1999)
Responsible: Daniela Tiscornia

Development of a semantic web of legal terminology.

FAL - Free Access to Law Movement (from 2006)
Responsible: Daniela Tiscornia

Free Access to Law Movement is a cultural initiative grouping together projects of various institutions from different countries dealing with legal information issues, aimed at providing free access to legal resources.

LOIS (Lexical Ontologies for Legal Information Society)
Responsible: Daniela Tiscornia

Project co-ordinated by the ITTIG and co-financed by the European Union under the eContent Program (2003-2005).