Baseball has a statistic for nearly everything and can inform the audience of a batter’s average against left-handed pitchers, on the road, during afternoon games, when the temperature is above 85 degrees in July. Sports, maybe one of the most famous users and consumers of data for analysis, disseminates that data to increase engagement of the broad spectrum of fans allowing them deeper insight into the game, a team or players.

But gaining insight from data, no matter how much you have or have access to, is where the true value resides. Sports is a great example of how data is available and how it is leveraged. And data has become a piece of nearly every facet of our lives – professionally or personally. From the app downloaded to the digital path taken for a purchase to the fitness tracker on a wrist, all collecting data. But, that data must be actionable to provide any value.

And in the legal space, analytics has become a topic discussed at every event, conference and networking reception. At the 2019 American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual meeting and conference, a “deep dive” session titled, “The Federal and State Court Analytics Market—Should the Buyer Beware? What’s on the Horizon?”, will feature multiple participants to discuss analytics and provide an understanding of the market. The session will include Jean O’Grady, senior director of Research & Knowledge Services at DLA Piper and creator of DeweyBStrategic.com; Bob Ambrogi, founder, LawSitesblog.com; and Jeff Arvidson, director, Product Management for Thomson Reuters, among others, to examine how analytics have become ubiquitous in the legal industry, as well as the need to understand and differentiate the various solutions and their offerings.

O’Grady, serving as a co-moderator, said, “Litigation analytics is one of the most exciting and fastest growing areas of legal research and insight. However, it is also the least understood. The AALL analytics ‘deep dive’ program was designed to help educate librarians and knowledge managers about the variety of factors they must consider in evaluating and selecting an analytics product.”

“Everyone has data, or at least access to data,” stated Arvidson. “Our key is making sure that data is delivered to inform one’s strategy, approach or decision to serve a client most effectively. If the data is just a collection of information but does not offer actionable insights, it does not provide an avenue to inform the next decision.”

The legal industry entered the analytics field from two different areas – analyzing company’s litigation patterns and intellectual property practice areas, but these are small slices of the vast universe of legal information waiting to be analyzed. With Litigation Analytics, Westlaw Edge now compiles information from dockets for every federal case type, except cases arising directly from the bankruptcy courts. It also aggregates information from Westlaw’s extensive case law collection to analyze judicial language and citation patterns. No other legal analytics tool has as much data or as many practice areas across both state and federal courts. Litigation Analytics includes nearly 8 million federal dockets and 150 million state dockets, with the ability to filter across more than 50 case types and more than 400 sub-case types.

Arvidson added, “There is a lot of data generated across the legal system every day. And Thomson Reuters has been augmenting that data for more than 100 years with attorney-authored content that helps ensure the analytics provided are accurate, insightful and actionable.”

“Litigation analytics allow lawyers to ask completely new kinds of questions and gain completely new kinds of insights into the patterns of judges rulings, law firm experience and court-level metrics,” added O’Grady. “It is imperative that librarians, lawyers and knowledge professionals get a grasp of what factors they should consider in evaluating an analytics product.”

To learn more about Litigation Analytics on Westlaw Edge, click here.

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