[Editor’s note: Recently, i had a conversation with Josh Becker, chairman of Lex Machina and head of legal analytics at LexisNexis, about the fast-growing area of litigation analytics. Becker made the case that not all analytics products on the market are created equal. Of course, he is biased in favor of his own product, but his position is worth airing and considering. So I invited him to put his thoughts in a post. The following is Becker’s article. If you have a different view, I’m happy to consider publishing it. Reach out to me at ambrogi-at-gmail-dot-com or on Twitter to @bobambrogi.]
By Josh Becker
Applying legal analytics to large stores of litigation data can be transformative for lawyers, law firms and their clients, leading to new insights, smarter legal strategies, stronger legal arguments and favorable outcomes. Practitioners who make judicious use of quality analytics tools – and recognize their limitations – can do better legal work more efficiently and enjoy a competitive advantage over those who do not have such tools at their disposal. Analytics can also provide organizations with data-based insights into the business of law, informing a broad range of decisions, ranging from who to hire and how to pitch to prospective clients to where to make business development investments.
However, some legal analytics solutions can produce inaccurate or misleading information, sometimes sending lawyers down the wrong path altogether. Access to a solution with a “legal analytics” label is not a guarantee of good, or even satisfactory, results.
Whether your encounter with legal analytics fulfills the enormous promise of the technology depends – a lot – on the specific tools you use, the size of the database and the quality of the data you are drawing from. It also depends on the level of human domain expertise that
