mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Accurate Legal Reasoning at Scale: Neuro-Symbolic Offloading and Structural Auditability for Robust Legal Adjudication

arXiv 2605.02472 ↗First posted 4 May 2026cs.CLcited by 0

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

Abstract (arXiv)

Legal texts often contain computational legal clauses--provisions whose understanding requires complex logic. While frontier Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) can describe such clauses, building production-ready systems is limited by reasoning errors and the high cost of inference. We propose Amortized Intelligence, a neuro-symbolic approach where we use an LLM once to translate a legal text into Deterministic Autonomous Contract Language (DACL): a typed graph intermediate representation. Adjudication then relies on deterministic graph executions with a visually auditable trace. In comparison against runtime LRM baselines (including GPT-5.2 and Gemini 3 Pro), our DACL-based Agent achieves near-perfect consistency and mitigates the "reasoning cliff" observed in probabilistic models. The system reduces compute costs by over 90% in high-volume workflows while satisfying the strict auditability requirements of legal adjudication.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 14 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 May 2026.

Builds on

14 of 42 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Thinking Longer, Not Always Smarter: Evaluating LLM Capabilities in Hierarchical Legal Reasoning9 Oct
  2. 2025Explainable Rule Application via Structured Prompting: A Neural-Symbolic Approach19 Jun
  3. 2025LEXam: Benchmarking Legal Reasoning on 340 Law Exams19 May
  4. 2025Towards Robust Legal Reasoning: Harnessing Logical LLMs in Law24 Feb
  5. 2023LegalBench: A Collaboratively Built Benchmark for Measuring Legal Reasoning in Large Language Models20 Aug

Other references · 9

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  2. 2023FrugalGPT: How to Use Large Language Models While Reducing Cost and Improving Performancecited by 791
  3. 2021CUAD: An Expert-Annotated NLP Dataset for Legal Contract Reviewcited by 232
  4. 2023Lawyer LLaMA Technical Reportcited by 54
  5. 2020A Benchmark for Lease Contract Reviewcited by 26
  6. 2025On Verifiable Legal Reasoning: A Multi-Agent Framework with Formalized Knowledge Representationscited by 16
  7. 2024ProSLM : A Prolog Synergized Language Model for explainable Domain Specific Knowledge Based Question Answeringcited by 5
  8. 2024Equitable Access to Justice: Logical LLMs Show Promisecited by 5
  9. 2025GRAPH-GRPO-LEX: Contract Graph Modeling and Reinforcement Learning with Group Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 1

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  1. 2026Bridging Legal Interpretation and Formal Logic: Faithfulness, Assumption, and the Future of AI Legal Reasoning
  2. 2026Reasoners or Translators? Contamination-aware Evaluation and Neuro-Symbolic Robustness in Tax Law
  3. 2025Better Call CLAUSE: A Discrepancy Benchmark for Auditing LLMs Legal Reasoning Capabilities
  4. 2025Towards Trustworthy Legal AI through LLM Agents and Formal Reasoning
  5. 2025A Law Reasoning Benchmark for LLM with Tree-Organized Structures including Factum Probandum, Evidence and Experiences
  6. 2025Deterministic Legal Agents: A Canonical Primitive API for Auditable Reasoning over Temporal Knowledge Graphs
  7. 2026OpenExempt: A Diagnostic Benchmark for Legal Reasoning and a Framework for Creating Custom Benchmarks on Demand
  8. 2026BenGER: Benchmarking LLM Systems on Subsumption-Based Legal Reasoning in German Law