Big Data for lawyers: the overview of tools
For lawyers, Big Data might offer much more than just a new area of practice. Why not using the principles of Big Data in legal practice? If many other industries use data in their decision-making and practice, there is no reason, why lawyers should not try to use too.
This article gives an overview of areas of practice and tools that are available to lawyers, who want to make use of Big Data in their practice. Some of them are free, others not. Some of them are more useful for firms in United States, some are more global. It is up to your firm, which of them are suitable for your goals.
The article gives a brief overview. In Data & IT Law, we would analyse the possibilities in following articles.
Make predictions on cases
In intellectual property cases, Lex Machina uses data to show likely outcomes in intellectual property cases.
Specifically for patent lawyers, Juristat tries to predict the future of patent applications and other issues in this area. It uses huge databases of raw data from patent offices.
Mark van Rijmenam describes a case of a law firm, which uses data to predict the outcome of a case based on the results of similar cases in the same jurisdiction.
Costs
By the use of TyMetrix, the law firm may benchmark itself to the other law firms based on data collected for several years. The firm also offers an application Rate Driver, that shows expected fees for legal services in 51 US states.
On the other hand, SkyAnalytics tool enables companies to manage their legal spending. That’s why, your law firm should be aware of this tool.
Legal e-discovery
Aaron Brown, program director of IBM’s Content Discovery and Search unit Aaron Brown, describes the possibilities to use several text analytics techniques in legal e-discovery.
Evidence in court
Mark van Rijmenam describes, how to use connected data from different sources as evidence in court.
Online databases
LexisNexis provides one of the greatest electronic databases for legal information.
Archives in Cloud
Mark van Rijmenam described the example of a law firm that moved its archives full of documentation to the private cloud. It created a pure virtual environment and saved on capital expenses by no longer requiring storage space for case files. It enables a faster analysis of existing data and finding information. The move also included the upgrade in firewalls and data protection.
Conclusion
As it is possible to see, firms have several possibilities, how to use Big Data in the legal industry. In the following articles, we would like to describe these areas of Big Data use for lawyers in more details. If you have any comments, questions or experience, do not hesitate to contact us.
