Classifying complex documents: comparing bespoke solutions to large language models

Abstract: Here we search for the best automated classification approach for a set of complex legal documents. Our classification task is not trivial: our aim is to classify ca 30,000 public courthouse records from 12 states and 267 counties at two different levels using nine sub-categories. Specifically, we investigated whether a fine-tuned LLM can achieve the accuracy of a bespoke custom-trained model, and what is the amount of fine-tuning necessary.