arXiv Computation and Language By Li Zhang, Kevin Ashley

Where Do Legal Factors Live in LLMs?

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The paper investigates how large language models (LLMs) internally encode legal knowledge, specifically the 26 CATO factors used in case-based legal reasoning. Experiments on three open models (Qwen3-1.7B, Qwen3-8B, Gemma-2 2B) demonstrate that all factors are linearly decodable and can be localized to single-layer readouts, with high test AUCs (0.86–1.00). The study identifies 78 model‑specific layer‑feature coordinates, linking symbolic legal abstractions (HYPO and CATO) to learned internal representations in LLMs.

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