In a significant expansion of its current analytics offering, Lex Machina, which was acquired by LexisNexis in November 2015, today (20 June) announced that its legal analytics platform now covers commercial litigation.
Commercial litigators using the platform will be able to make data-driven decisions based on detailed information about more than 62,000 commercial cases pending since 2009. Strategic insights include trends in case timing, resolutions, findings, damages, and remedies, as well as actionable intelligence on opposing counsel, law firms, parties, judges and venues.
Lex Machina, which started out with a niche focus on intellectual property litigation data and has gradually expanded out into securities and antitrust law, has as part of this latest product development process interviewed commercial litigators from top law firms and major corporations to better understand their particular analytics use-cases. The product team incorporated their feedback directly into the new offering. To meet the needs of commercial litigators, Lex Machina has added new features with practice area-specific tags such as expanded case timing analytics, new damages categories and new breach of contract and business tort findings.
While commercial litigation data is publicly available in the US on PACER, it does not contain a Nature of Suit code that captures all commercial cases and data can often be out of date thanks to factors including attorneys moving from one firm to another mid-case.
“Commercial litigation is by far Lex Machina’s biggest, most ambitions endeavour yet because its all-encompassing nature transcends so many other legal practices. Up to now, this has made it extraordinarily difficult for commercial litigators to gather critical insights they need to properly defend their clients,” said Josh Becker, CEO of Lex Machina. “Legal Analytics plays a crucial role in helping attorneys unravel the complexity of commercial litigation by providing them with relevant data and information they can use to quickly make informed business and legal decisions and provide better counsel for their clients.”