Robo-lawyer: A Contract Generator Chatbot

A research team led by Prof. Yangqiu SONG has developed a Robo-lawyer system to assist humans to interactively and (semi-)automatically generate contracts. The Robo-lawyer is an AI-based real system geared towards the masses. Its primary task is to sort out essential matters for drafting the agreement from user's input of several questions. The user can retrieve an agreement only if he/she can answer all questions, showing that they have thoroughly considered all the matters of concerns.

The Robo-lawyer system has many applications in different domains. The current system supports divorce and employment contracts. For example, Hong Kong's divorce rate in 2016 was more than double that in 1991. The rising demand for family mediation has been a mounting challenge for lawyers. Few divorcing couples actually realized that the high legal costs and procedural drag would take an emotional toll on themselves. Many of them are unwilling or unable to sit down for a mediation that could take months or years, especially for cross-border couples. A chatbot specialized in generating divorce agreements contracts can help them get through the process easier.

To make the Robo-lawyer more like a real person, sentiment analysis has been employed to help identify true feelings and moods of a person heading to a divorce through the dialogue. When a user writes "I am glad", for instance, it should be interpreted as an expression of relief instead of being upbeat. It even makes effort to persuade couples to think twice before finally deciding to divorce.

Watch a demo of the current system.

This is a collaborative project with Albert SO, a CSE alumnus from HKUST, who chairs the Hong Kong Mediation and Arbitration Centre.

For more information, please refer to the HKUST News: Robo-lawyer: Your AI Conflict Resolution.