More than ever, legal professionals need to quickly locate and understand the data-based factors surrounding their cases so they can more confidently build a strategy to help deliver fair and just outcomes for their community and citizenry.
To support the need for deep research, guidance and advanced intel, many online legal research and analytics services are building artificial intelligence (AI) technology into their tools and platforms.
LexisNexis recently added Litigation Analytics to Lexis+™ to provide the most accurate data-driven insights with Legal Research, Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis, all in one place. From understanding a judge’s behavior and courtroom trends, to knowing other attorneys’ track records, attorneys can ensure success in litigation, safeguard the quality of their work product and complete litigation tasks more efficiently.
Lexis+ Litigation Analytics brings to state and local government attorneys the most current and accurate intelligence around the judges, courts, attorneys and law firms for most U.S. jurisdictions. This AI functionality is an integral part of the service and easily accessible as one of four primary search buttons on the Lexis+ console.
Litigation analytics are especially helpful for staff in attorneys general offices, district attorneys and prosecutors’ offices, and municipal attorneys’ offices. Lexis+ Litigation Analytics helps these civil litigating attorneys:
- Gain a better understanding of judges and courts including caseload, time to key events and damages for both judges and courts:
- Evaluate outside and opposing counsel and check the track record of a law firm or attorney in federal and state courts; and
- Easily view law firm and attorney experience across case types, courts and more.
The Technology Underpinning Analytics
Litigation Analytics is powered by industry-leading Lex Machina analytics and the unrivaled Lexis CourtLink online docket service coverage. Insights are extracted from millions of downloaded court documents and enhanced with proprietary technology for greater depth, accuracy and comprehensiveness. Lexis+ Litigation Analytics integrates these insights and comparisons throughout the Lexis+ ecosystem and directly into established research workflows.As the volume of Lex Machina® State Court analytics continues to grow, new content additions are automatically included in Lexis+ subscriptions. Currently, Litigation Analytics has access to some of the larger state jurisdictions in the U.S. including Los Angeles County, Houston and New York. Lex Machina was named “Best Decision Management Solution” (AI Breakthrough Awards, 2019) and “Disruptor of the Year” (Changing Lawyer Awards, 2019). Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading global provider of legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics. Lex Machina, based in Silicon Valley, is part of LexisNexis.
Lexis+ Litigation Analytics provides strong advantages for state and local government attorneys over other similar services. One difference is the broader coverage and greater depth of content than other legal research platforms. Enhanced coverage delivers data from millions of court documents, compared with coverage based solely on the face of the docket. The service contains more state trial courts and coverage for courts, attorneys and firms. Last, it provides more high-value analytics for damages, timing and other key factors as well as exclusive comparisons via its Quick Tools feature.
Answer Litigation Questions Quickly
Litigation analytics answer myriad questions around courts and judges including:- What do I need to know about this judge or court to develop the best litigation strategy
- What do the behavior trends of my judge or court mean for my case?
- How long will it likely take for my case to reach key litigation milestones before this judge or court?
- Which court is the best venue for my case?
- What is the experience level of this judge or court in a specific area of law?
- How do I accurately forecast, price this matter and communicate the timeline to my client or organization?
- How can I access insights on key factors impacting my case without incurring added costs via outside counsel?
- What do I need to know about an attorney or law firm to increase my likelihood of success?
- What is the attorney’s or firm’s level of experience within the industry? Their track record overall? Their litigation history?
- Which specific cases has the attorney or firm previously litigated?
- How long does it take this attorney or firm to reach certain litigation milestones?
- For outside counsel, is this attorney or firm a good fit to represent my office?
Litigation Analytics in Action
A look inside some typical civil litigation scenarios sheds light on the ways legal professionals are applying litigation analytics tools to inform their cases.For example, Lisa is a municipal government attorney in Houston, Texas. A former employee — a civil servant — is planning to sue her office. She needs to gauge the level of severity of the case and gain insight into the players to determine whether the employee is looking for a quick settlement or aiming to go all the way to a trial and extract monetary damages.
First, she needs to know about the law firm, with which she is unfamiliar. She hops onto Lexis+ on her laptop, clicks the Litigation Analytics button on the Lexis+ home screen’s experience dock — one of four buttons prominently displayed including Legal Research, Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis. She types the law firm’s name into the search bar. In seconds, Lexis+ displays the firm’s litigation track record across state and federal courts.
Lisa sees this firm weighs heavily with its wins on the plaintiff rather than the defense side. She sees which kinds of cases were litigated in the past, in which courts, including awards detail, timing and more. She sees the information, charts and graphics needed to assess the law firm’s history with similar cases, including the damages awarded and the motion tempo.
Next, she investigates the judge assigned to the case. Still on the Litigation Analytics screen, she enters the judge’s name to get the full picture of his position on motions weighting toward the plaintiff, general timing on proceedings and general disposition toward similar cases. Armed with this data, Lisa is ready to argue her office’s case in the virtual courtroom this Monday.
In another example, James is an attorney at the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, N.Y., who needs to respond to a motion for summary judgment he is writing for a labor and employment case. He fires up Lexis+ to locate the relevant caselaw, checks the citation history to ensure the cases are still good law and applies it to the facts of the case. He clicks on the Practical Guidance button in the Lexis+ experience dock to review a practice note featuring the latest summary judgment requirements and trends in New York. He drafts the motion and brief, then uses Brief Analysis to “Shepardize” the case to validate the citations and to ensure he is relying on the best authority for good law.
He next clicks the Litigation Analytics button to extract insights on the opposing counsel’s track record. Within the same window, he reviews the opposing counsel’s total contracts cases in the Bronx jurisdiction and confirms that the opposing attorney has very little federal district court experience for the contracts case type. James shares this insight with his team during the final review of their motion practice strategy. The team is ready for court.
360-Degree View of the Situation
Litigation Analytics helps build knowledge around your judge and court by uncovering key trends while delivering critical insights into experience with cases like yours, timing to key milestones, behavior and trend comparisons and more. Attorneys can:- Understand judicial behavior and court trends - Contextualize your understanding of the judge or court with views of the underlying list of cases.
- Assess judicial experience with similar motions - Get a tally of total cases for a judge or court for a specific area of law to approximate experience on a motion like yours.
- Select better venues with comparison data - Compare caseloads, experience across case types, timing to key milestones and damages for up to four federal districts and judges at a time.
With Litigation Analytics, attorneys can contextualize their understanding of a law firm or opposing counsel by accessing data on their track record in federal and state courts while comparing performance based on actual litigation results. Attorneys can:
- Gauge the experience of attorneys and law firms - Dig deeper into the experience of an attorney or firm with access to the underlying list of related cases.
- Communicate informed litigation plans - Review how long it has taken the firm in the past to get to summary judgment, trial, dismissal and more.
- Uncover past performance and advantages - Identify strategic advantages with performance data on timing metrics and aggregate damages and insights into top courts and clients.
- Compare counsel based on litigation results - Size up opposing or outside counsel and tout your success with side-by-side comparisons of key factors, like previous experience, case timing and damages.
Lexis+ Legal Research and Analytics Ecosystem
Lexis+ is a feature-rich, premium legal solution that unites advanced research, practical guidance, brief analysis and enhanced tools with a modern user experience to deliver data-driven insights, greater efficiency and better outcomes.Lexis+ users appreciate the dramatic visual styling and simplified layout designed to set a new standard in ease of use. Striking imagery, bold colors and typography improve readability, reduce visual “clutter” and emphasize essential information and tasks. The Experience Dock creates an integrated starting point for core legal tasks and enables seamless switching between product experiences and workflows. Intuitive features, such as Search Tree, Code Compare and Shepard's® At Risk, make it easy for practitioners to access the information and insights they need, control their search experience and provide better counsel. Altogether, Lexis+ delivers on the demand for legal solutions that look and work more like the modern technology products that attorneys use in their personal lives.
Developed with feedback from more than 2,000 customer interactions, Lexis+ supports the needs of all legal audiences — from solo practitioners, to government lawyers, to the largest firms and legal departments — with enhanced tools and exclusive new features that are not available anywhere else, including:
- Brief Analysis: Extracts citations and legal concepts, recommends other relevant cases and briefs, identifies relevant passages and takes users directly to them, and showcases their Shepard’s treatment – all within a unique dashboard.
- Practical Guidance: Fully integrated practical guidance experience, with practice notes, checklists, annotated forms, drafting tools and industry insights from thousands of leading practitioners, easily accessible from its home page and within legal research results.
- Lexis Answers®: Responds to natural language search queries with the best, most relevant answer, taking users directly to its location within the document. Completely redesigned with the latest machine learning capabilities, Lexis Answers offers expanded and more relevant answers across wider question categories and automatic jurisdiction detection.
- Shepard's At Risk: Alerts attorneys to cases that are at risk of being overruled because the opinions they cite have been negatively treated.
- Code Compare: Quickly identify changes in the law or legislative intent by comparing two versions of a statute section side-by-side, including current, future and archival versions dating back to the early 1990s.
- Legislative Outlook: Predicts the passage of pending bills at the federal and state level.
- More powerful search capabilities that give practitioners more control over the user experience, including:
- Search Tree: Graphically depicts Boolean searches and highlights the impact of each keyword on search results, enabling users to refine searches for the best results.
- Missing and Must Include: Forces natural language searches to include specific keywords, like Google.
- Search Term Maps: Visually depicts clusters of search terms within search results and documents across 35 major content types for fast, easy navigation; trend identification; and direct access to relevant information.
- Ravel View: Data visualization technology illuminates key relationships between cases found in text-based search results. Improved offering features new map anchoring capabilities and display improvements.
About LexisNexis Legal & Professional
LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of legal, regulatory and business information and analytics that help customers increase productivity, improve decision-making and outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 10,600 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.
