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Headnote Prediction Using Machine Learning Sarmad Mahar1, Sahar Zafar2, and Kamran Nishat1 1CoCIS, PAF-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Pakistan 2Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Pakistan
Headnotes are the precise explanation and summary of legal points in an issued judgment. Law journals hire
experienced lawyers to write these headnotes. These headnotes help the reader quickly determine the issue discussed in the
case. Headnotes comprise two parts. The first part comprises the topic discussed in the judgment, and the second part contains
a summary of that judgment. In this thesis, we design, develop and evaluate headnote prediction using machine learning,
without involving human involvement. We divided this task into a two steps process. In the first step, we predict law points
used in the judgment by using text classification algorithms. The second step generates a summary of the judgment using text
summarization techniques. To achieve this task, we created a Databank by extracting data from different law sources in
Pakistan. We labelled training data generated based on Pakistan law websites. We tested different feature extraction methods
on judiciary data to improve our system. Using these feature extraction methods, we developed a dictionary of terminology for
ease of reference and utility. Our approach achieves 65% accuracy by using Linear Support Vector Classification with tri-
gram and without stemmer. Using active learning our system can continuously improve the accuracy with the increased
labelled examples provided by the users of the system.
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[23] Zhu K., Guo R., Hu W., Li Z., and Li Y., “Legal Judgment Prediction Based on Multiclass Information Fusion,” Complexity, 2020. Headnote Prediction Using Machine Learning 685 Sarmad Mahar Received MS (CS) Degree from PAF-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology. His area of research interest includes Artificial intelligence, information processing, pattern recognition and Natural Language Processing. Sahar Zafar Jumani Pursuing PhD at the University of Karachi. Department of computer science. Currently working as Lecturer at public sector Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU). Her area of research is Natural Language Processing, Artificial intelligence. Kamran Nishat Assistant Professor at PAF-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology. Pursuing Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Waterloo.