Chapter 2: A Survey on Legal Judgement Prediction Using Machine Learning

There are many judgements made every day by the courts around the world. However, it takes years for these judgements to be heard in court. The use of Intelligent Prediction systems in the judiciary system has been extremely helpful in reducing time delays, improving accuracy, etc. It is possible to make predictions in the judiciary system in regards to a wide range of cases. Various studies have examined how these systems can be applied to the legal field. In order to improve the decision-making process, machine learning (ML) techniques have been integrated into the legal domain. This study objective is to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) of studies that have evaluated the court judgements prediction using ML techniques. Based on the findings of the review, we determine, interpret and analyse the ML methods used in legal judgements prediction. The results of the review indicate that most methods achieved an accuracy of more than 70%. In this review, we present a summary of the findings from the study. However, there is still room to improve the predictions on the types of various judicial decisions that can be based on the current ML methods that utilise natural language processing in order to make them more accurate.