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.

ESSA

Image Caption: About time

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed with bi-partician support. ESSA keeps basic testing requirements of No Child Left Behind, however takes away the high stakes attached to student scores. Evaluating schools will now be done at state level and states are no longer required to evaluate teachers by student scores. The bill also expands access to high quality pre-school.

Source: Cory Turner http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/10/459219774/president-obama-signs-education-law-leaving-no-child-behind

Central Park is Trademarked

Article starts with “Donald Trump owns Central Park.” And then continues with “at least not yet.” Sinister, no? The licensing fee cost him $1625 for 5 classes of use. Central Park has not challenged him on this case yet and a law firm claims that it is unlikely he will use it because of the status of Central Park. While anyone can register a trademark, one does not always have the right to it.

Source: Annalisa Merelli http://qz.com/563949/donald-trump-owns-central-park/

Attention IQ

There is perhaps a new measure of a person’s ability to focus in the form of “attention IQ.” Scientists can measure the pattern of brain connectivity via MRI and correlate that towards people with and without attention disorders.

Source: Monica Rosenberg http://qz.com/559622/scientists-have-found-a-way-to-score-your-attention-iq/

Canada's Unified New Typeface

Canada 150 is the new typographic that unites the Latin characters of English and French with the syllabic characters of the indigenous dialects. Canada 150 was created by Raymond Larabie and is considered the semi-official typeface of Canada. They have had other semi-offical typefaces such as Carl Dair’s Cartier (1967), which was made digital friendly by Rod McDondald.

Check out the typeface at the source:

Source: Liz Stinson http://www.wired.com/2015/12/canadas-new-typeface-unifies-the-countrys-many-languages/