How Big Data Is Changing the Landscape in Legal industry

Legal analysis, something which is done manually is eyeing for better prospects in the field of analytics. The legal sector has been in peril with the new rumors of robot lawyers which are not showing up anytime soon. But this does tell us one thing for sure that the legal structure, which also beholds the big data, is in dire need of analytics and such platforms to function appropriately.

A historical data of cases, the summaries, the rulings and the verdicts all pile up to be called together as big data. Although some legal trophy-holders do think otherwise. The witness statements which sometimes crosses thousands of pages is another part of the big data. Big data is hence bringing the legal human analysis at questioning.

The legal space can be categorized into two types of analytics – descriptive and predictive. Descriptive analytics makes use of already existing data and other normalized tools to come to a conclusion. It basically tells what has happened. Predictive analytics tells you what is about to happen and it makes use of algorithms and machine learning to predict it. Similar to how an average value will be closer to the outcome if much more data is taken into account, data professionals believe that big data will actually help in changing from manual to automated legal processes.

LexisNexis, one of the firms that rule the data-driven legal analysis in America has already taken a dig at this. They offer services similar to a search engine but have a plethora of case studies as their database.

Ravel law is yet another firm in the US, formed by two lawyers in search of collaborating law and technology. One of their features called Judge Analytics allows a lawyer to find out whether a judge is sympathetic towards his/her arguments by analyzing his past decisions. This is a clear revolution in the field of law. Machine learning and technology can save you so much of your time. According to the founders, the legal module is the most conservatives of all which is why it demands more security and scrutiny in every result on the Ravel Dashboard. These dashboards are inculcated with language processing and machine learning abilities.

The similar revolution is taking place in Canada where a legal tech tool called Blue J is exploiting machine learning. Although it is helping, but doesn't claims to answer any possible question. Anyways, it is still a change from the previous way of discovering that one argument in the mountain of data. Blue J basically works on predictive analytics.

Any case requires going through humungous data and there might be a scenario where any other case may require the same set of data. So, rather than two lawyers wasting time on going through the same data analytics can make the job easy by not having to search twice.

The amalgamation of tech and law demands similar employees in the respective field. The people familiar with datasets and quantitative analysis or data governance will see a new-found interest in the law field. It won't be just lawyers in the law but more analytics only to make their job easier. It will create an absolutely new opportunity to judge a judge based on his decisions, having the pleasure of history of cases on your tips and reducing the time per case. Consequently, more cases will be addressed. The metrics based on the whole history of data collected through years of cases at one platform will aid in placing a better argument.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can give vibrant insights to understand the judicial behavior better if not a total prediction of how a case would turn out to be. Leveraging descriptive and predictive analytics brings new relevant data to a particular case. A significant amount of AI into law is the new black. What a lawyer might think a possible outcome of a case, well, analytics can turn that around via its descriptive analysis ensuring minimal or no disruption by big data.

As far as our previous thought of robot lawyers is concerned, well, that is not happening anytime soon. So, the legal profession will definitely see a change just that it won't be in the form of employee layoff. But AI will soon interfere as required in the fields soon and then things will change drastically.