A Comprehensive Survey on Legal Summarization: Challenges and Future Directions

This article provides a systematic up-to-date survey of automatic summarization techniques, datasets, models, and evaluation methods in the legal domain. Through specific source selection criteria, we thoroughly review over 120 papers spanning the modern ‘transformer’ era of natural language processing (NLP), thus filling a gap in existing systematic surveys on the matter. We present existing research along several axes and discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities for future research.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Journal
ACM Computing Surveys
Published
2025-11-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3776586
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Topic Modeling
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
4.96
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
article

A Comprehensive Survey on Legal Summarization: Challenges and Future Directions

Mousumi Akter, Dennis Dobler, Ivan Habernal, Erion Çano et al.
2 citations
ACM Computing Surveys
Topic Modeling
4.96
article

A Comprehensive Survey on Legal Summarization: Challenges and Future Directions

Mousumi Akter, Dennis Dobler, Ivan Habernal, Erion Çano, E. Weber
article en
2 citations

Abstract

This article provides a systematic up-to-date survey of automatic summarization techniques, datasets, models, and evaluation methods in the legal domain. Through specific source selection criteria, we thoroughly review over 120 papers spanning the modern ‘transformer’ era of natural language processing (NLP), thus filling a gap in existing systematic surveys on the matter. We present existing research along several axes and discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities for future research.

ACM Computing SurveysVol. 58(7)
TU Dortmund University (DE), Ruhr University Bochum (DE)
Openalex Percentile: Top 4%
Topic Modeling
4.96
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.