Technology

Kicking Off (Virtual) Legalweek 2021 With A Lexis+ Legal Analytics Update

Because of the pandemic, Legalweek is going virtual, and it's being held over the course of the entire year.

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Every year around this time I start to gear up for the Legalweek conference in New York City. For those unfamiliar with Legalweek, it’s a large legal technology conference sponsored every year by American Lawyer Media that typically draws attendees, ranging from attorneys to IT staff, who are primarily from large law firms. It boasts multiple educational tracks that focus on a variety of legal technology issues, including eDiscovery, knowledge management, records management, project management, risk management, mobile devices and computing, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

I’ve attended this conference as press for more than a decade now, and have found it to be a great way to network and get a sense of how the legal technology landscape will change in the coming year.

Of course, 2021 is a different beast. Because of the pandemic, Legalweek is going virtual, and it’s being held over the course of the entire year. Next week’s sessions are the first round of the year-long event.

As regular readers of this column know, I prefer avatar-based conference platforms. But for Legalweek, I’ll make an exception. I’m giving it a shot and am hopeful that the virtual conference platform utilized by the conference won’t fall flat, which has been the case for the Zoom-based conferences I’ve attended thus far. We’ll see how it goes next week.

In the meantime, as I gear up for the conference, the PR pitches from conference exhibitors have been flowing into my email inbox, and I’m in the process of deciding which ones interest me thus far. Of those pitches, one of the earlier emails from LexisNexis regarding litigation analytics tools caught my eye. I met with LexisNexis representatives yesterday to learn more about how they’ve added a litigation analytics tool to Lexis+ and to see it in action during a demo.

At the start of the demo, I spoke with Karl Harris, CEO of Lex Machina, and Wade Malone, a Product Manager at Lex Machina. They explained how some of Lex Machina’s data and analytics tools are now included in the LexisNexis research platform, Lexis+. I learned that LexisNexis offers full access to Lex Machina as a separate subscription, but top level litigation analytics pulled from Lex Machina are now available at no additional cost to Lexis+ subscribers.

The end effect is that Lexis+ subscribers continue to have access to legal research tools, practical guidance, and brief analytics — and now litigation analytics have been added to the mix. These new litigation analytics tools are accessible to Lexis+ subscribers as part of the typical search process, and can be accessed using “Quick Tools” functionality as well. Lexis+ subscribers also have available a “Comparator Tool” that allows users to compare data sets for specific judges, attorneys, and courts.

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The way it works is that Lexis+ subscribers are able to search for analytics on courts, judges, attorneys, or law firms. Once you run a search for a judge’s name, law firm, lawyer’s name, or court, you’re provided with results that include the number of cases handled overall, the number of cases handled from specific categories (e.g., contracts or real estate), damage amounts awarded, and more. The database includes all federal courts and judges, along with some state court data, often from larger metropolitan areas of the country. They advised me that they intend to continue to expand coverage into additional jurisdictions in the future.

One caveat to be aware of is that the analytics provided are not as in depth as they would be if your firm also subscribed to Lex Machina. So although you can drill down into the data, it will sometimes end at a “flat” page that won’t allow you to access the next level of data. For example, if you run a search for a particular judge and the results show that the judge has handled 500 employment matters over the past year, when you click on the number “500” it takes you to a page that consists of a graph of cases from the past year that shows the number of pending employment matters on the judge’s docket for the year. It’s a flat page, however, meaning that you’re not able to interact further with any of the data on that page unless you also subscribe to Lex Machina.

Even with that limitation, the information provided is incredibly useful for attorneys. Litigation analytics are a fantastic, must-have tool for lawyers seeking a competitive edge, since they provide valuable insights that can be used to guide the direction of a case and help litigators make educated, strategic decisions throughout the course of a matter. For that reason, even with its limitations, the addition of this functionality to Lexis+ is undoubtedly a welcome one for its subscribers.

Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

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