Feature Spotlight: Lexis+ Litigation Analytics Gives Small & Mid-sized Firms an Edge in the Courtroom

No matter the size of your firm – even those with thousands of attorneys on staff – litigation is complicated. For smaller firms, the challenges are magnified exponentially.

Often working with limited resources, small and mid-sized firm litigators don’t just need to strategize and exercise the trial skills necessary to win a piece of litigation – they need to do so more efficiently than their opponents. For them, it makes sense to use research platforms that give them the greatest possible advantage.

To assist in those efforts, LexisNexis^® has added Litigation Analytics to its online legal research platform, Lexis+™. The new tool surfaces the characteristics of judges, courts and opposing counsel that bear most heavily on litigation strategies.

Powered by industry-leading Lex Machina^® legal analytics and CourtLink^® docket coverage, Litigation Analytics provides insights into the data points on which cases turn. It unearths a wealth of information on judges and courts at both the state and federal levels including damage awards they have handed out in specific types of actions. It’s also a powerful competitive intelligence tool, giving litigators a rich dossier of data on opposing counsel, including the venues they frequently appear in and the number of similar cases they have taken to trial.

Through the power of artificial intelligence (including machine learning and natural language processing), Lexis+ already helps users put together the crucial building blocks for a case through its checklists, recommendations of authority to cite and ability to analyze briefs. Now, with the addition of Litigation Analytics to this toolbox, litigators have access to a world of additional insights that are critical in crafting winning litigation strategies.

Know Your Judges and Courts

What’s past is prologue, the saying goes. A judicial analytics tool can analyze a judge’s past decisions and arm lawyers with insights into a judge’s experience across case types, timing, caseloads and damages. Knowing such relevant history can be vital in choosing how to attack a case.

But analytics can help in other ways, too. Lawyers can use the Litigation Analytics’ Courts & Judges Comparator to research other state and federal courtroom trends over time, including how often certain types of cases land in any court or before a specific judge. It also can help attorneys anticipate how long a case might take to reach key litigation milestones before a particular judge or court, which helps in accurately predicting the litigation timeline for a matter (and communicating that with the client).

 Plaintiff-side attorneys can compare multiple districts to find the venue that best suits the client’s case. Defense counsel, meanwhile, can use the data to determine whether to pursue a transfer of venue, and if so, to which district.

Know Your Opposing Counsel

As in political campaigns, gathering key information about your opponent can be integral to lawsuit success. Technology has made it easier for litigators to access this information. With Litigation Analytics, it’s as easy as running a search.

What’s your opponent’s experience level in similar cases? How often does that lawyer or firm appear before a specific judge? How apt are they to settle or push for a trial? Reviewing the other side’s record with Litigation Analytics’ Counsel Comparator helps you determine how to approach your current matter.

It’s also helpful to look at your opponents’ wider body of work to provide visibility into opposing council’s track record, including  open and terminated cases, party role and more  Counsel Comparator users can review law firms’ litigation results in federal district court cases, including their total filings, case resolutions, and remedies awarded in their cases.

Pricing and Pitching

Litigation Analytics can also help you determine how to gain new clients. Information-rich legal analytics platforms help users more confidently set pricing expectations for clients by giving them data on the average time to resolution for matters in a certain jurisdiction. Lawyers can also use the tool to gather intelligence for new business and to demonstrate a firm’s competitive advantage to clients and prospects by benchmarking how it stacks up against its peers in specific areas. Information gleaned from Litigation Analytics can help a firm’s business development efforts by identifying competing firms’ top 10 clients, which lawyers can use to spot potential opportunities. Your firm can also compare its own metrics to that of competitors and highlight specific data points in new-business proposals and pitch decks.

Litigators know that the outcome of each matter has a substantial impact on their practice. Lexis+ Litigation Analytics puts lawyers in the best position to win any case by arming them with the deepest possible understanding of the judge, court and opposing counsel. Beyond that, it helps them operate efficiently – and even offers data-driven insights to acquire new business.

From bringing in new business to mastering the courtroom, Litigation Analytics helps law firms compete and win at every level.