The eGanges expert system was designed by Pamela Gray in 2002 as part of her doctoral studies, in conjunction with her son Xenogene Gray, a computer programmer. The eGanges software is produced by Grays Knowledge Engineering, a business established for the development and distribution of expert systems and knowledge management technology.
The concept of the eGanges (electronic, Glossed, adversarial, nested, graphical expert system) is to provide legal decision-making assistance through the concept of epistemology - the simulation of qualitative reasoning. The cornerstone of the eGange intelligence program is computational epistemology and the concept of a 3d logic model suitable for object-oriented processing, to transform the concept of a generic rule system to a computational epistemology. In that regard, eGanges can be seen to provide a qualitative tool that can be linked as required to any quantitative or other qualitative program to provide a mechanism for expert system based decision making.
According to the system designers, the eGanges software was developed to permit in a user-friendly format, the “categorization of qualitative premises…... as deductive, inductive and abductive premises”, through a deductive River hierarchy. eGanges maps have been developed to allow the user a greater degree of precise control over detail and indirect relationships – to counter the chaos of legal decision spaghetti and establish a balance between “control, security, understanding and freedom” in the decision making process.
Since 2002, the eGanges expert system applications and corresponding development of eGange applets have grown to encompass the fields and teachings of legal logic, legal knowledge engineering and finance law.
eGanges system is, at present, a shell system which allows input of rules and noting their interoperation. As of itself, eGanges cannot provide legal support, and can only work as an assistance tool to legal professionals, and possibly to their clients. In such a form, a legal support system based on eGanges can only be as good as the very person inputting the rules and their interoperation in the system. Whereas eGanges is able to link several areas of law into one flowchart-like system, the initial user would have to have a knowledge of all the legal interoperations in the first place. This results in a circular argument that a legal practitioner who does not have a deep knowledge of particular areas of law is creating an eGanges based system will not be able to create a system which can be relied on fully. On the other hand, a person who is a specialist in a particular area of law, such as a barrister, will not need such a system simply because they already know all the intricacies of the interoperation of legal rules.
The only way in which such a system may present itself as a viable commercial alternative its shell was filled out with rules by a large legal research company, such as LexisNexisAU. A product based on eGanges and developed in such a way would collect sufficient amount of congregate knowledge which would enable assistance to persons of legal and non-legal background. However, such a system could get too complicated for many users as the amount of relations between different legal areas is enormous, and if a matter is of such complexity that it requires eGanges based system, it is probably just easier to refer it to a specialist.
Links:-
Grays Knowledge Engineering Website & Online Shop http://www.grayske.com/index.html
I have started a blog on this topic. I would appreciate other thoughts on the scope for the application of Expert Systems in Law. Mark's eGanges Blog