Capabilities
This skill can:
- Identify disputed issues from case materials.
- Determine which disputes are factual disputes and which are legal disputes.
- Transform scattered content into legal issues, providing a basis for subsequent analysis.
How to Use
Step-by-step instructions:
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Identify both parties (or multiple parties) in the case.
Identify the circumstances of the case subjects, clarify how many parties there are in the case, and who each subject is.
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Identify the claims of each party in the case.
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Clarify whether the content of the dispute between the parties is concentrated on facts or legal evaluation. Clarify the content of the dispute between the parties, that is, the differences in their claims. The distinction is: differences in facts and differences in legal evaluation.
Factual focus of dispute, usually also called general focus of dispute, mainly refers to the facts over which the parties dispute regarding the formation, alteration, and extinguishment of legal relationships. For example, in private lending cases, whether the borrower actually received the funds; in subrogation rights disputes of creditors, whether the debtor is sluggish in exercising its own rights and thereby harms the realization of the creditor's claim, and so on.
The most common legal focus of dispute concerns the correct interpretation and application of law. Its summarization is more professional and is often intertwined with facts, making boundary demarcation and characterization objectively difficult. When a factual focus of dispute encounters issues of legal application or evidentiary rules, it can also easily transform into a legal focus of dispute, including allocation of the burden of proof, the validity and probative force of evidence, interpretation of legal provisions, and the correct application of law.
Accurately grasping the core elements of the matters disputed by the parties and properly summarizing the focus of dispute not only has a direct impact on the judgment result of the case, but also plays a directional role in protecting the parties' substantive rights. For example, whether a party constitutes repeated litigation involves both the factual dispute of whether the litigation subjects, claims, and subject matter are the same, and the legal dispute arising from the parties' different understandings of each element, and also directly determines the direction of adjudication of the parties' substantive rights.
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Transform disagreements into standardized focus of dispute. Transform scattered disputed content into expressions of issues with significance for legal analysis. The expression of the focus of dispute should be as objective, concise, and adjudicable as possible, avoiding purely emotional or everyday language.
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Determine the hierarchy of different focus of dispute. Not all disagreements are of equal importance; core issues, secondary issues, and background disagreements should be further distinguished. Specifically:
- Core issues: issues that directly affect whether the claim is established, whether the defense is established, whether liability is borne, and how the legal effect is determined;
- Secondary issues: usually affect the scope of liability, the amount of damages, the arrangement of the burden of proof, the determination of auxiliary facts, or the specific form of relief;
- Background disagreements: although disputed, they have a weaker impact on the adjudication conclusion and serve more as narrative supplementation or factual background explanation.
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Separately sort out the supporting grounds for the claims of each party in the case. That is, which facts, evidence, and legal bases each party relies on to support its position.
This step usually includes: what are the key facts on which the plaintiff's claims rely; what are the key facts on which the defendant's defense relies; what evidence has each party cited; and which legal norms or legal effects are the parties' respective claims attempting to correspond to.
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Dynamic adjustment review. The issues in dispute are not fixed and unchanging. As the litigation process advances, new facts or evidence may emerge. The issues in dispute need to be dynamically adjusted according to the trial situation, and the opinions of both parties should be sought before the trial ends to ensure that the issues in dispute accurately reflect the core disputes of the case.
Input Format
Expected input format:
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Format 1: Case factual materials that have already been preliminarily organized.
The input can be case materials after legal fact extraction, including subject facts, conduct facts, time facts, result facts, causation, etc. This type of input is suitable for directly carrying out identification of the issues in dispute.
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Format 2: Statements of case facts that have not undergone legal fact extraction.
The input can also be a summary of the facts of a judgment, statements of disputes at trial, summaries of agency opinions, consultation records, or case materials, etc., which contain the plaintiff's claims, the defendant's defense, the evidence situation, and preliminary legal disagreements. This type of input is suitable for further extracting the issues in dispute from the factual structure.
Output Format
Will generate:
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Description of the issues in dispute:
Descriptions of the issues in dispute are generally expressed in interrogative sentences, such as "Whether Zhang San constitutes unauthorized possession" and "Whether Li Si has a legal basis for acquiring the property." They can be output in the format of "conclusion -> reasons -> basis."
Output as a structured list of issues in dispute, usually including core issues in dispute, secondary issues in dispute, and brief explanations, and indicating the main factual disagreements and legal issues corresponding to each issue.
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Format of the issues in dispute:
The issues in dispute can be output as a checklist or in table form. For complex cases, a structure of issues developed in chronological order can also be output, which is suitable for organizing complex cases and visual presentation.
Example Usage
Examples:
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Example 1:
Please identify the issues in dispute in this case based on the following case materials, and distinguish which belong to factual disputes and which belong to legal disputes:
A claims that in May 2024 he transferred 100,000 yuan to B, and the two agreed that it would be repaid one month later; B claims that the 100,000 yuan was not a loan, but an investment contribution for cooperation between the two parties. A demands that B repay the principal and interest of the loan, and B does not agree.
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Example 2:
Please extract, based on the following materials on a sales contract dispute, the core issues in dispute suitable for analysis of civil law claims, and explain which key facts, evidence, and legal issues each issue in dispute corresponds to:
The plaintiff claims that when purchasing a computer on a second-hand platform, the seller clearly stated that it was "brand new and unopened"; the defendant claims that he never promised that the computer was brand new, and only said that its "appearance is good." After receiving the goods, the plaintiff discovered traces of repair on the motherboard and requested a return and refund.
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Example 3:
Please organize the issues in dispute in this case based on this case summary, according to the hierarchy of "core issues - secondary issues - background disagreements":
The plaintiff claims that a certain platform disclosed its mobile phone number to a third party without consent, causing it to suffer continuous harassment; the defendant platform claims that the information involved does not belong to sensitive personal information, and that the plaintiff failed to prove a causal relationship between the harassment result and the platform's conduct.
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Example 4:
Please organize, based on the following statements of disputes at trial, the supporting grounds for each party's respective claims, and map them under each issue in dispute:
The plaintiff claims that the contract has been formed and that it has performed its payment obligation; the defendant claims that the contract has not yet taken effect, and that even if it has taken effect, its non-performance was caused by the plaintiff's prior breach.
Scripts (if applicable)
Best Practices
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Identify the issues by centering on the claims and defenses
The focus of the dispute should revolve around whether the claims are supported and whether the defenses are established; only those disagreements that would affect the determination of rights and obligations, the bearing of liability, or the legal effect should be identified as genuine focuses of the dispute.
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The focus of the dispute should be stated as an adjudicable question
The statement of the issues should be as objective, concise, and standardized as possible, avoiding emotional, partisan, or conclusion-presuming language, and should revolve around what factual and normative questions need to be determined.
Limitations
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Limitation 1
The identification of the focus of the dispute depends on the quality of the organization of the case facts. If the extraction of the underlying facts is incomplete, the parties' claims are unclear, or the evidentiary materials are seriously insufficient, the result of issue identification may be relatively vague.
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Limitation 2
This skill cannot replace the resolution of the dispute; it can only serve as a preliminary step in legal analysis.