Legal AI Utilizing Secondary Sources: Law Textbooks, Commentaries, and Specialized Books...

Published 10 Apr.2025 07:03(KST)

Textbooks, commentaries, and various specialized books that serve as practical guides or 'secondary literature' for understanding and interpreting precedents and laws are becoming targets for legal tech companies. In particular, companies providing generative artificial intelligence (AI) services see the use of secondary literature as essential to improving the accuracy of their answers.

Elbox Launches Its Own Secondary Literature Brand

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Elbox (CEO Jin Lee) launched its own legal content brand, 'Elbox Scala,' in January 2025. Aiming for optimized data production and distribution in the generative AI era, the content was authored by the Fair Trade Commission chairman, lawyers, and expert committee members from major law firms. The secondary literature under Elbox Scala includes ▲Theory and Practice of Monopoly Regulation Law ▲Investigation Manual ▲Labor Union Law and Labor Relations Practice ▲Commentary on Mutual Savings Bank Act ▲Construction Industry Basic Act Utilization Guide, among others. To expand the brand in the future, Elbox plans to release content in major legal fields such as capital markets law, personal information protection law, tax law, and labor law with a wider range of authors.

Since April, Elbox has been exclusively utilizing the entire set of commentaries from the Judicial Administration Society, totaling 64 volumes. Having provided the Judicial Administration Society’s commentaries since 2022, Elbox formalized a content utilization partnership and applied these to its AI services starting in 2025. The content of Elbox Scala is primarily composed of commentaries focused on special laws and basic laws. Elbox stated, "We expect that secondary literature will fill the gap between laws and rulings, thereby improving answer accuracy," and added, "The recent significant improvement in the accuracy of answers based on the Judicial Administration Society’s commentaries has been confirmed both quantitatively and qualitatively."

Law&Company Forms Exclusive Partnership with Pakyoungsa

Law&Company (CEO Bonhwan Kim) is continuously expanding the content available for its legal AI assistant, 'SuperLawyer,' through a partnership with Pakyoungsa, a specialized legal book publisher. In June 2024, Law&Company signed a contract with Pakyoungsa and is currently utilizing over 600 secondary literature volumes for answers, including ▲Basic law textbooks (administrative law, corporate law, criminal procedure law) ▲Specialized field textbooks and practical guides (fair trade law, financial law, tax law, intellectual property law, etc.) ▲Basic and special law commentaries. Pakyoungsa’s legal books are cited as needed in all answers provided by SuperLawyer. Users can check the author names, publishers, and publication years of the cited books in the answers. Law&Company plans to provide an additional 100 or so latest revised editions of Pakyoungsa’s legal books and is continuing discussions with multiple publishers to enhance service quality through content partnerships.

Lawyers also recognize the importance of secondary literature. A lawyer from a major law firm said, "AI is mainly used for non-legal tasks such as research or translation," adding, "A lot of effort must be put into crafting prompts to get the desired answers." He said, "If secondary materials like commentaries are properly learned and the number or accuracy of results according to questions increases, the utilization of AI could improve significantly compared to now." Another lawyer from a different law firm said, "We use AI for drafting and translation, but final review is necessary," and added, "It would be helpful if the service improves by utilizing diverse legal data."

Seohayeon, Legal Times Reporter