# Label Indeterminacy in AI & Law

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17463 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17463/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Longformer: The Long-Document Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05150/) (2020)
- [Neural Legal Judgment Prediction in English](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02059/) (2019)
- [Large Legal Fictions: Profiling Legal Hallucinations in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01301/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Legal Judgment Prediction: Datasets, Metrics, Models and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.04859/) (2022)
- [Perils of Label Indeterminacy: A Case Study on Prediction of Neurological Recovery After Cardiac Arrest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04243/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Machine learning is increasingly used in the legal domain, where it typically operates retrospectively by treating past case outcomes as ground truth. However, legal outcomes are often shaped by human interventions that are not captured in most machine learning approaches. A final decision may result from a settlement, an appeal, or other procedural actions. This creates label indeterminacy: the outcome could have been different if the intervention had or had not taken place. We argue that legal machine learning applications need to account for label indeterminacy. Methods exist that can impute these indeterminate labels, but they are all grounded in unverifiable assumptions. In the context of classifying cases from the European Court of Human Rights, we show that the way that labels are constructed during training can significantly affect model behaviour. We therefore position label indeterminacy as a relevant concern in AI & Law and demonstrate how it can shape model behaviour.