Lex Machina has announced the expansion of their state law analytics offering with the addition of the Sacramento County Superior Court (California) and Clark County (Nevada) which covers Las Vegas. This adds a total of 171,480 
new cases bringing the total state case analytics to 1,126,722 new cases . The state law analytics provides lawyers with insights into judges, court, law firms, attorneys and parties.
The new state court analytics modules are like the Lex Machina federal court analytics products, built using a proprietary Attorney Data Engine and other natural language processing technology, According to the press release “Lex Machina is the only legal analytics provider able to utilize state court documents to provide comprehensive coverage about the behavior of judges, law firms, attorneys, and parties in state courts.”
In an earlier post about Lex Machina state law analytics products I described the unique challenges of taming state court data. “each state court system the product development team had to get “under the hood” to understand the idiosyncrasies of docket system and data collection practices.”
According to the press release “Lex Machina worked closely with the court systems to understand their docketing practices and create analytics that reflect the unique aspects of individual courts. The two new state courts – Sacramento County Superior Court (88,000+ cases) and Clark County (Las Vegas) District Court (82,000+ cases) – each have their own data collection infrastructure and nuances. These modules, and thus the substantial case numbers, cover four years of court activity beginning with cases filed January 1, 2016 or later.”
Why Sacramento and Clark County?
The Sacramento and Clark County courts were chosen because they represent important data sets in the universe of state court analytics. Sacramento County Superior Court is an important venue for California state litigation, since it is located in the California State Capitol and therefore is a key source of civil cases involving government entities and businesses. Lex Machina recently added analysis of 170.6 preemptions of California judges. Clark County District Court is the largest general jurisdiction court in Nevada, serving more than 2.1 million citizens in the Las Vegas area. It encompasses all municipalities and outlying communities of Clark County.
The state court modules offer many of the same features as the Lex Machina federal analytics products including:
- 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
Lex Machina has previously released modules for the Delaware Court of Chancery, Los Angeles County Superior Court and the Houston Area (including Harris County District Court, Harris County Court, Fort Bend County District Court, and Fort Bend County Court). San Bernardino County Superior Court is slated for release next week on June 9th.
Lex Machina was first to product the federal litigation analytics market and has enjoyed a significant first mover advantage. By contrast Lex Machina was relatively late to the state analytics market and faces significant competition from Westlaw Edge, Fastcase Docket Alarm, and Gavelytics. Nonetheless the states covered and the analytics reports available from each vendor vary significantly. Product selection requires the sophisticated analysis of each product by a librarian or lawyer with analytics expertise to determine which state product best meets the needs a particular firm.
