Modern evaluation of Legal QA systems is shifting from terminal accuracy toward process-aware analyses of model reasoning. We propose a diagnostic framework grounded in monotonic pedagogical scaffolding, where language models receive gold-standard, case-relevant information across stages aligned with the canonical legal framework FIRAC — Facts, Issue, Rules, Application, Conclusion. By strictly adding solution-relevant content at each step, we introduce a controlled monotonic intervention that allows for the evaluation of reasoning trajectories rather than isolated outcomes.This longitudinal design enables the introduction of two transition-based diagnostics: Errors-to-Success (E2S) quantifies the guidance required to reach correctness, while Success-to-Errors (S2E) measures the fragility of that correctness under additional structure. These local patterns define a global robustness criterion termed Stable Accuracy, which credits a response only if the model maintains correctness throughout all scaffolding stages and enforces a higher bar for correctness by distinguishing sustained reasoning from transient patterns.We instantiate the framework on 3,123 Brazilian Bar Exam questions paired with expert-annotated explanations. Our findings reveal model instability patterns hidden from accuracy-only metrics and demonstrate that terminal accuracy systematically overestimates legal reasoning competence. To test the robustness of our diagnostics, we also evaluate a majority-vote aggregation across multiple reasoning samples, finding that the observed instability patterns persist under this stronger inference setting. Furthermore, principal component analysis indicates that legal domains cluster into distinct regions, suggesting systematic differences in reasoning demands across domains. While focused on the legal domain, our evaluation protocol is generalizable to any task with a staged reasoning structure.

Do LLMs process text and mathematics as a unified skill, or do these components rely on distinct underlying mechanisms? We investigate this question by disentangling the textual interpretation and mathematical solving steps in word problems drawn from Brazil’s largest college entrance exam (ENEM) and GSM8K, a popular grade school-level benchmark. Using the symbolic solver SymPy, we transform word problems into equivalent purely mathematical representations, isolating equation formulation from textual comprehension. Our extended benchmarks enable a structured analysis of LLM performance across these two dimensions. Through empirical evaluations, we find that small-scale LLMs struggle significantly more with text interpretation than with equation solving, with accuracy dropping by a factor of 2 to 7 when solving full word problems compared to their math-only counterparts. Exploratory factor analysis confirms a bidimensional structure in LLM reasoning, where models exhibit distinct proficiencies in textual and mathematical components, underscoring the need for targeted improvements in language comprehension. By analyzing the latent factors associated with each model, our findings provide a framework for researchers and practitioners to make informed choices when selecting models based on computational costs and the nature of their tasks.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in applications that shape public discourse, yet little is known aboutwhether they reflect distinct opinions on global issues like climate change. This study compares climate change-relatedresponses from multiple LLMs with human opinions collected through the People’s Climate Vote 2024 survey (UNDP – UnitedNations Development Programme and Oxford, 2024). We compare country and LLM”s answer probability distributions and apply Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify latent opinion dimensions. Our findings reveal that while LLM responsesdo not exhibit significant biases toward specific demographic groups, they encompass a wide range of opinions, sometimesdiverging markedly from the majority human perspective.

Material facts (MF) are crucial and obligatory disclosures that can significantly influence asset values. Following their release, financial analysts embark on the meticulous and highly specialized task of crafting analyses to shed light on their impact on company assets, a challenge elevated by the daily amount of MFs released. Generative AI, with its demonstrated power of crafting coherent text, emerges as a promising solution to this task. However, while these analyses must incorporate the MF, they must also transcend it, enhancing it with vital background information, valuable and grounded recommendations, prospects, potential risks, and their underlying reasoning. In this paper, we approach this task as an instance of controllable text generation, aiming to ensure adherence to the MF and other pivotal attributes as control elements. We first explore language models’ capacity to manage this task by embedding those elements into prompts and engaging popular chatbots. A bilingual proof of concept underscores both the potential and the challenges of applying generative AI techniques to this task.