Laypeople (i.e. individuals without legal training) may often have trouble resolving their legal problems. In this work, we present the JusticeBot methodology. This methodology can be used to build legal decision support tools, that support laypeople in exploring their legal rights in certain situations, using a hybrid case-based and rule-based reasoning approach. The system ask the user questions regarding their situation and provides them with legal information, references to previous similar cases and possible next steps. This information could potentially help the user resolve their issue, e.g. by settling their case or enforcing their rights in court. We present the methodology for building such tools, which consists of discovering typically applied legal rules from legislation and case law, and encoding previous cases to support the user. We also present an interface to build tools using this methodology and a case study of the first deployed JusticeBot version, focused on landlord-tenant disputes, which has been used by thousands of individuals.

翻译：非专业人士（即未接受法律培训的个人）在解决自身法律问题时往往面临困难。本研究提出JusticeBot方法论，该方法通过混合案例推理与规则推理的技术路径，可构建用于法律决策的支持工具，帮助非专业人士在特定情境中探索自身法律权利。系统通过询问用户情境相关问题，提供法律信息、相似历史案例索引及可行后续行动方案。这些信息可能有助于用户通过和解或法庭维权等方式解决纠纷。我们详细阐述了该工具构建方法：包括从立法与判例中提取典型适用法律规则、对历史案例进行编码以支持用户决策。同时，本文展示了基于该方法论的工具构建界面，并以首个部署版本（聚焦房东-租户纠纷，已有数千用户使用）为案例进行实证研究。