Lexis and Westlaw laid the foundations for today’s online research market in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Their dominance in the legal research arena was challenged on two fronts in the 2010’s. First they were challenged by the emergence of two full service competitors: Bloomberg Law and Fastcase. More surprising was the disruptive impact of the disgruntled, entrepreneur lawyers with a good idea and some venture capital who invented some completely new ways of approaching research and delivering insights..

Spinning Analytics Gold From Dockets. Lexis and WESTLAW were in the docket business for decades but it Lex Machina (now owned by Lexis Nexis) which invented a way for lawyers to use analytics for pitches and litigation strategy.

Lex Machina took the most mundane of legal data sets– docket entries and spun it into a goldmine of legal insights. Lex Machina started as a public interest project at Stamford Law school in 2006. The product leverages machine learning and natural language processing, to normalize, structure, and analyze raw data from millions of case dockets
Continue Reading Analytics, AI and Insights: 5 Innovations that Redefined Legal Research

Legal Analytics is changing the practice and business of law. LexisNexis has released its third annual survey. Bringing Analytics into Focus suggests that firms have reached a tipping point in embracing analytics in the business and practice of law with 90% of users reporting that analytics makes them more efficient and more effective. Here is a link to the full press release.

Survey Demographics 77% of the firms listed are listed in the Am Law
Continue Reading LexisNexis ALM Study Measures Growth and Resistance to Analytics in the Practice and Business of Law

Lex Machina is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the launch of new state court analytics modules offering data on more than 870,000 cases. The new modules cover Los Angeles County California (615,000 cases) and Harris District and County court in Texas (combined 255,000 cases). The developers have maintained the look and feel of the Lex Machina federal modules and offer analytics insights into judges, courts, law firms and individual attorneys. The data covers four years of court data starting with January 1, 2016.

The Lex Machina state court features:
● Searching by judge, law firm, attorney name or party
● Timing analytics, trial resolutions, trial damages and trial rulings
● Keyword searching within docket entry text and downloaded documents
● Viewing analytics across all state courts or in one particular court
● Court-specific filters, such as case types and case tags

Building a state analytics product is Hard. The market has been impatient for state analytics – but I understand the hold up. Pacer data which underpins all of the federal analytics products is relatively “clean” and consistent compared to state court data. Even within a single  state, each court can vary in the types of data it collects or the types of documents it makes available online. I spoke with Carla Rydholm, Director of Product Management to get a better
Continue Reading Lex Machina launches State Court Analytics for California and Texas Counties – Launch Event at Legal Tech

Gavelytics is starting the New Year with the launch of a new AI enabled platform for business intelligence. Gavelytics which is a pioneer in state court analytics offering  has announced the launch a business center which will provide competitive insights into the litigation history of competing firms and opposing counsel for pitches and  identifying business development opportunities.  The press release reprinted below described the new feature  as merging judicial and motion practice technologies with trial court analytics about law firms and litigants. The platform provides insights into litigation histories, docket data and access to litigation documents.

The Business Intelligence center  currently provides insights for 18 New York counties and 4 Texas counties. New York Counties are: Bronx, Broome, Cayuga, Erie, Essex Jefferson, Kings, Monroe, Nassau, New York, Niagara, Ontario, Queens, Rensselaer, Richmond, Seneca, Suffolk and Westchester. The Texas counties are Bexar, Dallas, Galveston and Harris.

The Gavelytics Business Intelligence Center

Gavelytics is facing increased competition in state court analytics from Westlaw Edge, Fastcase/Docket Alarm and Lexis. They remain the unique source of some California motion insights including the “Gavel Score”  which indicates
Continue Reading Gavelytics Launches New Legal Business Intelligence Tool Leveraging State Court Analytics

By my recollection State Net is one of the oldest surviving legal research and legislative tracking systems.  State Net collected and coded and normalized data about the activities of 50 state legislatures back in the dial up  days of modems with acoustic couplers. They thrived long enough to be acquired by Lexis Nexis in 2010.

Over the years the system expanded to cover regulations from all 50 states. The latest challenge is addressing the growth in important local legislation. State Net now tracks  laws introduced in over 300 major cities and counties around the country.

Daniel Lewis, founder of Ravel Law which was acquired by Lexis Nexis in 2017 is now responsible for the State Net system in his role as vice president of product LexisNexis Legal & Professional. Lewis provided me with an overview of the new State Net features and put the challenge of state motioning in perspective. According to Lewis  each year 135,000 bills are introduced across the 50 states compared to about 10,000 federal bills. Fifteen times more state bills
Continue Reading LexisNexis Announces Relaunch of State Net Celebrating 50 Years With Analytics and Forecasting Features

Gavelytics a high tech legal analytics company focused on state court analytics announced today that their analytics platform had been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Patent no. 10,452,734     for “Data Visualization Platform for Use in a Network Environment”  covers Gavelytics’ invention of a unique way to parse, visualize and display

Thanks to the International Legal Technology Association for inviting me to present a webinar on the use of analytics to manage licenses and spending.Digital Resources Analytics: Determining the Right Mix of Resources for Your Firm  

Date : Thursday, December 12th from 11:00am-11:30am ET.

Format: 30 minute webinar.

Description: Thanks to high renewal costs, licensing

Gavelytics  has just expanded their judges analytics product to include the 4 of the 5 state counties within the boundaries of New York City (Bronx, Kings, Queens,  and New York). The expanded judge product also includes the ability to view the dockets underlying any of the product’s metrics. A user can, for example, quickly identify every case in which a judge presided over a motion for summary judgment in a tort case and view the relevant cases.

State law analytics is a hot area of development. There are two distinct branches of litigation analytics. Some litigation
Continue Reading Gavelytics Launches State Litigation Analytics New York Judges–Posts Analytics Webinar Recording

Today LexisNexis is releasing results of an independent study commissioned by LexisNexis.  The study was conducted between August and September 2019 and included responses from 5,061 law students at 201 law schools. The survey was  conducted” to better understand  future lawyer attitudes, behaviors and key drivers of user preference in relation to legal research.”Access

Each year AALL welcomes new exhibitors seeking to reach the decision-makers in law libraries and information centers.  The current powerful generation  of tools in the legal  market often offer multiple features so the products are sometimes not easy to categorize. I have taken the liberty of characterizing each new exhibitor by a single label