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arXiv · 2607.09099

L-MAD: A Systematic Evaluation of Multi-Agent Debate Structures in Legal Reasoning

Tan-Minh Nguyen·Hoang-Trung Nguyen·Huu-Dong Nguyen·Dinh-Truong Do·Thi-Hai-Yen Vuong·Le-Minh Nguyen
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Abstract

While multi-agent debate (MAD) frameworks have shown significant potential in general reasoning, their effectiveness in highly structured, knowledge-heavy legal domains remains under-explored. In this work, we introduce the Legal Multi-Agent Debate (L-MAD) framework to systematically evaluate different debate structures and aggregation methods within Legal Textual Entailment. By assigning distinct expert personas to multiple agents, L-MAD improves upon strong single-agent baselines by up to 8\%. Furthermore, analyzing how debate scales reveals a clear trade-off: increasing the agent population reduces inconsistency and improves accuracy, whereas extending discussion rounds induces a detrimental \textit{over-deliberation drift} where agents reinforce each other's mistakes. Ultimately, our findings outline the practical boundaries and safety margins of deploying collaborative multi-agent systems in high-stakes legal reasoning environments.

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Tan-Minh Nguyen, Hoang-Trung Nguyen, Huu-Dong Nguyen, Dinh-Truong Do, Thi-Hai-Yen Vuong, Le-Minh Nguyen. 2026-07-10. L-MAD: A Systematic Evaluation of Multi-Agent Debate Structures in Legal Reasoning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.09099

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