If you are in the legal field and would like to either learn about expert systems and how they are developed or learn how to develop expert systems yourself, then this is the book for you. It is well written and adequately illustrated. Throughout the book, examples from the legal field are used effectively and sensible comments are made about the practical implications of the techniques. The last chapter of the book is devoted to this topic. All of the concepts and techniques are defined and developed from the ground up. The author defines the terms he introduces and develops each result carefully in short steps. Legal applications serve as the motivator for each of the techniques discussed. The problem of precedent and its implications for the development of rules is treated thoroughly and effectively. The reader need not be fluent in computer programming to understand this book, though some fluency in the programming languages used is required to master the program listings provided.

The topics covered include such basic areas as the meaning of artificial intelligence and how to design computer programs as well as more specialized subjects such as inference engines, rule-based models, the use of similarity and other measures in expert systems, and how to test a knowledge base. Expert systems are developed, and program listings are provided for these systems.

The only major fault is that the index of this book is too skimpy. For example, Prolog and Pascal (used in the text for some of the listed programs) do not even appear in the index. Many other important concepts and topics that are discussed, such as IF statements, arrays, and other programming constructs and data structures, are not indexed. Trees, which are discussed at some length in chapters 2, 4, and 8, are not indexed. Furthermore, the page listings for some of the entries are incomplete. For example, LES (a Legal Expert System generator) is mentioned on pages 52, 64, 65, 66, 70, 161, and 171, and the only entry in the index is for page 65. Similarly, MYCIN is mentioned on pages 7, 13, 14, 177, 178, 179, and 187, but reference is made only to pages 7, 177, and 178 in the index. The poor index substantially reduces the potential value of this book as a reference. Fortunately, the book’s value as an introduction to expert systems for those in the legal field or even as a guide to how to develop expert systems is not substantially reduced by the skimpiness of the index.