Yesterday Lex Machina announced the launch of a newly expanded Contracts Litigation module which includes 45,000 new cases which resulted in the awarding of $4 billion in damages. Lex Machina now offers insights into more than 130,000 commercial and non-commercial cases pending in federal district courts since 2009. New cases include individual, class action, and government lawsuits.This release upgrades and replaces the Commercial Litigation module which was released in June of 2017.

The module offers the standard Lex Machina insights into case timing, resolutions, findings, damages, and remedies, as well as insights into on opposing counsel, law firms, parties, judges, venues and other data that can inform litigation strategy or a pitch meeting.

The press release highlights the following insights:

• Findings go beyond breach of contract and include unjust enrichment, conversion, fraud, tortious interference, defamation, and breach of fiduciary duty.
• The practice area includes nearly 2,000 cases that resolved at trial and over 6,500 cases that resolved at summary judgment, over 8,000 cases at default judgment, and over 1,400 on consent judgment.
• A breach of contract claim was evaluated by the court in over 18,500 cases.
• Using a Franchise Agreement case tag, users can see about 6,500 cases relating to franchise agreement litigation, including both business and individual franchisees.
• Overall damages for the Contracts litigation module are over $2.2 billion, with over $1 billion in Class Action Settlement Damages.

Lex Machina in the market– Lex Machina is facing increasing competition in the analytics area. Lex Machina has taken a slower topical approach in which they leverage AI, machine learning and human expertise to curate a subset of cases in a specific area of litigation. They currently covers 13 areas of law (Antitrust, bankruptcy, contacts, copyright, Delaware Chancery Court, Employment, ERISA, Insurance, Patent, Products Liability, Securities, Trademark and Trade Secret litigation. They provide the most sophisticated product on the market for the areas they cover. Competitors such as Westlaw Edge, Bloomberg Law and Fastcase DocketAlarm offer data across all federal cases, but they rely on the Pacer’s Nature of Suit (NOS) code which does not adequately describe a large number of federal suits. Although Lex Machina analytics on fewer topics than their competitors, Lex Machina has the advantage of offering the most sophisticated filters and visual displays. However, since the market is changing quickly – they will face increasing pressure to add new modules at a faster clip.