Big Data and the Law

The mass media is now discovering that the ubiquity of "Big Data" is now impacting how lawyers assess cases. Lex Machina, founded by Stanford Law Professor, Mark Lemley, has assembled a wide database of litigation outcomes which purports to provide some directional and even predictive attributes to attorneys (and clients) assessing case values.

Given the availability of similar analytics (predictive pricing) in other verticals (for example, IRI in the retail grocery space and Power Information Network for retail automotive, services offered by the likes of Lex Machina are long overdue in the legal industry which have instead long relied on "horse sense" and "gut instinct".

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/09/24/should-lawyers-fear-big-data-or-embrace-it/

See, as well, Michigan State University, Professor Daniel Katz's formulation of General Counsel's as "Supply Chain Managers".

http://reinventlaw.com/main.html