Reviewing and Summarizing the US Emergency Bill 2020 with Cognitiv+
by Marketing Team | March 26, 2020
As we speak, US Congress is examining and discussing the Coronavirus Emergency Bill (Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act).
The bill is an immense effort of emergency legislation that impacts several previous laws, including the US Housing Act 1937 and the Revenue Code 1986.
The contents of this bill span more than 1000 pages. This means that there are 1000 pages to be reviewed, discussed and amended under critical time constraints — a herculean task for Congress, the Executive Branch and everyone called to apply these provisions. Last but not least, it is an incredible task for the public and press to understand what the bill actually entails.
As legal technologists, we want to do our part and put Cognitiv+’s software to work.
Within minutes, Cognitiv+’s machine learning technology was able to:
- Extract a list of all the acts the bill will impact;
- Index the bill for easier review, extracting the main titles. Because the document is converted into a machine-readable format, it is possible to annotate it and select additional titles and clauses deemed relevant. In turn, Cognitiv+’s deep learning technology can learn from your annotations and identify similarly relevant clauses within the bill;
- Extract a list of obligations from the bill. Understanding what needs to be done is pivotal, and Cognitiv+ makes it possible to have the complete list of deliverables ready. The technology can also sort obligations into 4 categories: Obligation, Prohibition, Deliverable and Discretionary;
- Extract the definitions included in the bill;
- Output an Excel report and a Word summary that contains all the obligations included in the bill. Further, the excel spreadsheet allows the user to filter obligations.
Our Pledge as Legal Technologists
Understanding the urgency of this current situation, we want to offer our help to reduce as many uncertainties as possible.
As we already did for the UK Coronavirus Act 2020, we will make the reports from the US Coronavirus Emergency Bill freely available to the public and press. These reports can help speed up the revision process, ignite discussion and identify what can be done. You can download the reports here.
Please keep in mind that as with any AI technology, Cognitiv+ has a margin of error — refer back to the text of the Coronavirus Emergency Bill for a comprehensive view.
Stay safe.
The Cognitiv+ Team
