A Comparison of Case Law Results between Bloomberg Law's 'Smart Code' Automated Annotated Statutes and Traditional Curated Annotated Codes

Abstract

Traditional annotated codes provide an edited list of cases, organized by topic, that cite a particular statute. Bloomberg Law has recently implemented “Smart Code,” a computer-generated citator to the United States Code. The computer-generated Smart Code is designed to compete with traditional edited annotated codes in that it uses an automated and algorithmic process to classify the cases that cite a statute into a set of ninety topics. Using legal research examples in a variety of topics of increasing abstraction, results using Smart Code are compared to traditional annotated codes (United States Code Service and United States Code Annotated) as well as to specialized looseleafs (e.g., Standard Federal Tax Reporter).

Keywords: Annotated Codes, Bloomberg Law, Citators, Codes, Statutes, Westlaw, Lexis