Data Analytics in Law

Lawyers file litigation claims that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Co-founder of consulting firm LexPredict, Dan Katz, has claimed that these analytics features are being incorporated into the legal field but have not been accepted very well as of due to the lack of third-party validation. To obtain third-party validation, software companies must open up to third-parties with their predicted results and their actual case results to their analytics programs. The company, Lex Machina, for example has been working with 20+ law firms to analyze and predict patent and IP litigation. There is a database with structured data for ease of access and analyzation. Michael Simons, a partner at Akin Gump uses Lex Machina in a way to obtain stats on judges and districts rulings on transfer venue, discovery-related or for summary judgement. Robert Parnell, founder and CEO of SettlementAnalytics has claimed that there is a huge portion subjected to human error pointing to a 2008 study in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. In this study, plaintiffs were found to err 61.2 percent of the cases and defendants 24.3 percent. Error in this case meant that they reject a settlement offer only to obtain a equal or worse result. The study has a population of 2,000 civil cases in California. My Take: In a business of uncertainty, having a better mechanism of predicting cases can result in increased competition and shrinking of the market. Source: https://bol.bna.com/data-analytics-gaining-ground-but-bold-promises-need-validation/ Original Author: Chris Marr Publication: Bloomberg BNA

Originally appeared on Sept. 6, 2015 http://newspalette.tumblr.com/post/128490610000/lawyers-file-litigation-claims-that-are-worth.