Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics and the New Legal Services (Data Analytics Applications)

Data has reshaped industries around the world, from finance and medicine to sports. Law has trailed behind other industries, but is quickly following suit. For many years, law firms made important decisions–including very large decisions–based on limited experience (at best), or hunches (at worst).

Data science is growing quickly in law firms, law schools, and corporate legal departments. In Data Analytics Applications in Law, leading practitioners examine the cutting edge of this trend, looking at new tools from our present, as well as the future of data analytics in law.

Every aspect of the practice of law is changing, all the way from law school to litigation and appeal. Law firms are using data to decide whether to take on new clients, the range of likely outcomes, and to understand the parties and judges involved. They use science to draft and to understand contracts, comparing provisions against hundreds of thousands of similar examples.

The use of data to improve lawyering should come as no surprise. The availability of more and more information online, combined with inexpensive storage space and massive computing power, suggest that these tools with not only proliferate, but that (following Moore’s Law), they will become more effective and less expensive every year. Sophisticated clients not only prefer firms that use data analysis in their practice–they soon will demand it.