Automated drafting of self-explaining documents
L. Karl Branting, James C. Lester, Charles B. Callaway · 1997
The capacity for self-explanation can make computer-drafted documents more credible, assist in the retrieval and adaptation of archival documents, and permit comparison of documents at a deep level.We propose a knowledge-based model of documents that makes explicit the underlying goals that documents are intended to achieve and the stylistic conventions to which they must conform.These goals and conventions are expressed in a dual justification structure that represents the illocutionary and rhetorical dependencies underlying documents.After demonstrating how a document grammar derived from dual justification structures can be used to automate document drafting, we show how documents can exploit dual justification structures to "explain themselves" by answering queries about (1) the purposes for inclusion of text in the document and (2) the justification for propositions expressed in the text.This self-explanation framework has been implemented in the DOCU-PLANNER, a prototype document generation system that produces "queryable" documents.1 Introduction Legal document drafting is an essential professional skill for attorneys and judges.In the U.S., a significant portion of attorneys' workloads consists of drafting documents intended to precisely stipulate legal relationships such as wills, contracts, and leases, and persuasive documents arising from litigation such as pleadings, motions, and briefs.Document drafting can be viewed as a kind of configuration task in which textual elements are selected and arranged to satisfy the goals of the drafter and to conform to the stylistic conventions of the document genre.One source of complexity in document drafting is the combinatorics of selection and configuration decisions, which create large search spaces characteristic of most synthesis tasks.However, a more fundamental reason for the difficulty of document drafting is that the goals that documents are intended to achieve and the stylistic conventions to which they must conform are seldom made explicit.hmission to make digitabhard copy of all or part of this work for personal or chw~m use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage.the copyright notice, the tide of Ihe p$!ication and its date appear.and notice is given that copying is by PWSSlOn of ACM, Inc.To copy otherwise.to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific pcmrission and/or fee.