Legal Analytics On The Rise: LexisNexis Reveals What’s Empowering Today’s Data-Driven Lawyers

We sat down with Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, to discuss the results of 2020 Legal Analytics Study, current trends in legal analytics, and what we can expect to see in the legal analytics arena going forward.

The legal industry is at a tipping point when it comes to capitalizing on legal analytics to provide better and more efficient legal services. LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal analytics tools, recently commissioned the 2020 Legal Analytics Study, in partnership with ALM Intelligence, to explore the current use of legal analytics in the legal industry and the benefits it offers law firms. The study surveyed 163 large law firm professionals in December 2019 to uncover the industry’s views on the adoption and application of legal analytics.

We recently sat down with Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, to discuss the results of the study, current trends in legal analytics, and what we can expect to see in the legal analytics arena going forward.

What are some of the biggest takeaways from the 2020 Legal Analytics Study?

The results from this year’s study clearly show we’ve reached a tipping point in the legal analytics adoption curve among Am Law 200 firms, driven by competitive pressures, the expectations of corporate clients and the need to control costs. An overwhelming majority of law firms — 70% — recognize these benefits and have adopted legal analytics, while 90% of analytics users agree that legal analytics make them better legal practitioners. This survey validates what we’ve known for quite some time — that law firms should provide access to the legal analytics tools their professionals value and desire to remain competitive.   

Are more firms today adopting analytics? If so, what’s driving the increase?

We’re seeing a rapid increase in the adoption of analytics, and we expect to see that increase continue. Of the lawyers whose organizations have access to legal analytics, 75% reported seeing usage increase in the last 12 months and 92% said they intend to increase their use of legal analytics in the next year.

Client expectations and competitive pressures were cited as the top two drivers of legal analytics adoption among large law firms. Of the users surveyed, a vast majority said legal analytics were encouraged or looked upon favorably by clients. It’s an extremely powerful thing for legal professionals — and their clients — to be able to look at a thorough analysis of how long it would take a case to reach summary judgment and what the potential damages would be before pursuing a legal strategy. It makes the intrinsic value of analytics and how it can improve the knowledge, competitiveness, and efficiency of legal professionals and their law firm clear.

What benefits do legal analytics offer?

The overwhelming majority of lawyers who currently use legal analytics say it makes them better, more efficient, and more effective practitioners. And even the majority of those who don’t currently have access to the technology, recognize its value and believe that it would make them better lawyers if they used it. 

The cited top benefits of legal analytics include increases in an organization’s knowledge, competitiveness and efficiency, as well as a better ability to gain competitive insights, strategically assess and price cases and pursue new business, but I don’t think it stops there. The ability to take massive amounts of data and truly pinpoint exact strategies or language that can make or break a case is a revolutionary shift for the legal industry. Being able to walk into court and know how your judge has ruled on similar cases in the past and what language or cases he cited in his rulings gives you a huge competitive advantage that is only accessible with advanced language analytics.

How can law firms get the most out of legal analytics?

Analytics have useful applications in both the practice of law and the business of law. In the practice of law use-cases, lawyers value the ability to gain competitive insights on other players in litigation, the knowledge to better assess cases and the ability to have a greater footing for determining case strategy.

What was really interesting is how business of law use-cases for legal analytics have grown over the past year, expanding beyond its original function as a litigation tool. This clearly indicates that law firms recognize that legal analytics can do so much more for their organizations, such as pricing legal matters, gathering competitive intelligence for new business, or simply demonstrating a competitive advantage to clients.

How is LexisNexis changing the legal analytics game?

The legal industry’s most groundbreaking, innovative, and impactful analytics solutions reside on our flagship Lexis Advance platform, enabling attorneys to do their work more efficiently, provide better client counsel, and make more informed business decisions in today’s hypercompetitive environment. Additionally, through sophisticated tools like Context and Lex Machina, we’re helping lawyers across the industry make the most of the analytics capabilities available today. 

As the leader in legal analytics, we couldn’t be happier to see more law firms, attorneys, and other legal professionals adopting these tools and finding new ways for the technology to add value to their business and profession.

What should we expect to see in the realm of legal analytics in the future?

Based on the positive survey results and our own in-market intelligence, we’re expecting continued growth and adoption of legal analytics in the years to come. Nearly all law firms that use legal analytics expect to increase or expand its use in the next year, and a solid number of firms that don’t use it plan to invest in legal analytics over the next two years. 

The legal analytics tools available today offer data-driven attorneys the ability to know things that were previously unknowable, and we only expect those abilities to increase in the future as the technologies become more powerful and refined.

What impact has COVID-19 had on analytics use? Are you seeing an uptick in analytics usage and adoption? 

As one would imagine, the federally mandated COVID-19 restrictions in March disrupted many of the established processes that had been driving the practice of law — including the use of analytics. But once attorneys adjusted to working from home, we saw a tremendous uptick in usage and adoption of analytics. 

For instance, our language analytics platform, Context, recorded its highest usage ever in April 2020, up more than 50% above its previous high-usage record in February and spiking nearly 80% from March. The increase came primarily from the large law and academic segments and included a very notable increase in the same users coming back repeatedly. Similarly, Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics, whose growth had been trending upward in late February, saw a near 25% drop in usage in the first half of March but by the end of April, usage had rebounded to within a few basis points of its February high. Overall, this rebound demonstrates the importance of analytics to today’s legal practice and its ability to deliver critical information and insights under the most challenging of circumstances.


Discover the value of legal analytics from LexisNexis

Context on Lexis Advance® is a language analytics solution that applies machine learning and natural language processing across tens of millions of legal and news documents, including judicial opinions, expert testimony, and company profiles to extract and visualize analytical insights that can help litigation attorneys find the language and citations most persuasive to a judge or court, identify the best expert witness, or identify correlations among news events, litigation and financial performance for a company. Request a free trial.  

Lex Machina is the only legal industry solution that provides outcome analytics to help you anticipate case timing, resolutions, damages, remedies, and findings. Lex Machina combines natural language processing and human expertise to analyze tens of millions of court dockets and documents. Request a demo.