We first revealed in September last year that Herbert Smith Freehills had launched a pilot with Solomonic to test how data extracted from judgments might help better prepare clients facing litigation. Well, congratulations to Solomonic, as the global firm successfully completes the first stage of that development partnership and has agreed a deal to roll out Solomonic’s litigation analytics platform across their UK disputes team. That, as Innovate UK announces that it will fund a partnership between Solomonic and top ranked Warwick Business School to develop the machine learning capabilities to drive better litigation data and analytics.
The HSF partnership looks to provide all HSF’s lawyers with hard data and analytics on all the sitting judges in the Commercial Court – as well as the most recent eight retirees – going back more than five years. Donny Surtani, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, who is speaking at #GlenLegal19, said: “We are very excited to be further cementing our relationship with Solomonic. The use of litigation data and analytics is an important tool – shaping the future of how litigation is practiced.”
Meanwhile the funding was provided through the Government’s modern industrial strategy by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.
Gideon Cohen, Solomonic co-founder, said: “2019 is off to a great start. Herbert Smith Freehills are top ranked globally for their litigation work, and we are very excited to be deepening our relationship with them. In particular, we look forward to working with them to mould the new offerings we are developing for settlement data and Chancery division judgment analytics.”
He added: “The vote of confidence in our vision from Innovate UK, and the scalability that our AI project will enable, will help us to accelerate the value we can provide for the key players in the litigation sector.”
The wins come despite the fact that the UK is still significantly hampered when it comes to litigation analytics by the lack of publicly recorded and available case law and court data, unlike in the United States. While the UK is ahead in most areas when it comes to legal technology initiatives that directly benefit the clients, litigation analytics is not one of those.