Bloomberg Law has added attorney analytics to their suite of litigation analytics which has included  analytics for companies, law firms and judges. Product Manager, David Kleiman provided me with a demo and responded to my questions. As law firms  embrace analytics for business intelligence, pitches and litigation strategy it is more important than ever for have a clear understanding of the parameters of all analytics. How complicated that it be – as you will see below – there are lots of issues which impact the results delivered by every analytics product.

What attorneys are covered?

The attorney analytics includes analytics for 100,000 attorneys from  775 law firms. The analytics in Bloomberg  Law  are limited to cases involving  the representation of companies in federal courts from January 1 2007 to the present. Attorney names are extracted from docket sheets. There is a “type ahead” feature when typing a lawyer name a list of similar names appear in a drop down list. One problem with the list is that is  doesn’t distinguish lawyers with identical names. You have you click through each “John Smith” to get more information. I recommend that they add the lawyer’s state of practice or year of admission to the bar next to each name to make the selection of the correct attorney easier.

The analytics can provide a variety of insights into an attorneys history:

• What companies  have been represented?
• What issues has the attorneys litigated?
• In which  jurisdictions did the attorney practice?
• What is the overall volume of litigation over time.

Filters available to enhance focus narrow analytics to precise scenario. Data can be limited by time, company, case types jurisdiction and law firm.

Attorney profiles are available and  include additional biographical  information and links to news stories about the attorney.

Data Normalization Issues

Company name normalization – I asked Kleiman to explain how they deal with company name variations, mergers  and name changes. Kleiman explained that Bloomberg Law Analytics leverages the Bloomberg company database which includes 70,000 public and  3.5 million private companies That data set is used to validate company and law firm names using machine learning and algorithms. Unmatched companies are reviewed by QA team.

Law Firm changes – The lawyers litigation history will cumulate even if the lawyer -with certain caveats.   That history only includes time when associated with thee 775 firms that are included in  Bloomberg Law analytics. So if a lawyer was a solo practitioner or at small firm not included in  the 775 firms which Bloomberg covers — that history will not be included.

Additional charts illustrating attorney analytics are available at this link.