Rich McCue

1
Rich McCue rmccue_at_law.uvic.ca June 2004
UVic Faculty of Law http//law.uvic.ca/rmccue
2
Outline for Today

• What is an Expert System?
• Why Expert Systems in Legal Clinics?
• Demonstrate OpenExpert.org
• Why Open Source?
• How to use the software and contribute back to
  the community.

3
What is an Expert System?

• An expert system is... a program made up of a
  set of rules that analyze information, (usually
  supplied by the user of the system), about a
  specific class of problems, as well as provide
  analysis of the problem(s), and, depending upon
  their design, a recommended course of user action
  in order to implement corrections.
• - http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

4
An Example Diagnosing Forgetfulness and Confusion
5
Why Expert Systems in Legal Clinics?

• Helps preserve knowledge of staff -- builds up
  the corporate memory of the clinic.
• Helps train new students.
• Help new students to find solutions more quickly
  and more accurately in technical areas of the law
  (productivity).
• Self Service System can be made publicly
  available (if desired) via the web.

6
Replace the Students with an Expert System?

• Expert Systems not good at solving all kinds of
  problems.
• Not good at subjective evaluations.
• Not good where there is uncertainty.
• Good at clearly defined law with lots of options
  (tax law child support variance orders).

HAL, HAL! Halllll...
7
OpenExpert.org Demo

• The Divorce Expert...
• The Laptop Expert...
• Editing the Laptop Expert.
• Major changes coming to the Editing Interface.

8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
Why Open Source?

• How the project started.
• Google turned up high cost systems
• SourceForge turned up difficult to use systems.
• The Experment... that worked.

13
Open Source Definition

• Open source is a work methodology... and
  generally is any computer software whose source
  code is either in the public domain or, ...
  distributed under an open-source license such as
  the GNU General Public License (GPL). Such a
  license may require that the source code be
  distributed along with the software, and that the
  source code be freely modifiable... An
  open-source license itself does not necessarily
  require that the software, or its source,
  initially has to be freely (in both senses of the
  word) available on the Internet. Most popular
  open-source software is, however. - wikipedia.org

14
Why we took the software OpenSource

• We're lazy like others to do our work for us.
• We lack the resources to create a world class
  piece of software.
• We want others to benefit from our efforts and
  improve on them... then share back.
• Sharing Wizards can help everyone in the Legal
  Clinic communinty.

15
What Next?

• Download it from www.openexpert.org.
• Server Requirements An Apache web server with
  PHP support, and a MySQL server (any linux server
  will have these available).
• We may host for Clinics with Windows Servers.
• Drop your card in the hat for a t-shirt draw!
• Questions and/or Comments?

16
Any other questions?

• Feel free to contact me if you have any other
  questions...
• Rich McCue
• UVic Faculty of Law
• rmccue_at_law.uvic.ca
• Ph [phone]
• http//law.uvic.ca/rmccue/