Relevance

Pseudo Relevance Feedback in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Pseudo Relevance Feedback in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Pseudo Relevance Feedback may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Some researchers are experimenting with relevance feedback systems that dont require user input or evaluation. The initial search is simply modified on the basis of the most highly-ranked documents in the initial retrieval set. This technique is called pseudo relevance feedback.

Relevance in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Relevance in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Relevance may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Judgments of relevance are used in information retrieval as an indication of the usefulness of retrieved documentary units in response to a request or a search. The common measures of retrieval effectiveness, recall and precision, are both based on a determination of relevance (see also section 9.1). Sometimes researchers try to make distinctions between relevance, utility, pertinence, and similar concepts, or to distinguish types of relevance, such as topical relevance as opposed to user relevance (the idea being that a document might be on the topic, and therefore topically relevant, but the user cant use it or doesnt want it — perhaps he or she cant read the language or already has the document or the writing is too complex, etc.).

Relevance Feedback in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Relevance Feedback in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Relevance Feedback may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Relevance feedback refers to methods for adjusting a search statement based on preliminary relevance judgments by the user. The usual approach is for a preliminary search to proceed using terms (and modifications such as term weights, truncation, proximity limits, etc.) provided by the user. The results of this initial search are presented to the user, along with an evaluative questionnaire in which the user can indicate preliminary relevance judgments concerning the value of the retrieved documents. These judgments are then used by the system to modify the initial search statement (e.g., adding weights to the more successful terms, decreasing weights for the less successful terms or eliminating them altogether), and a second search is performed. This interaction can continue as long as the user wishes. See also pseudo relevance feedback.