It is no secret that legal analytics is changing the everyday practices of litigators. In recent years, dozens of commentators have published their own predictions on the ways in which technology will transform, disrupt, or revolutionize the legal industry. Even the American Bar Association has followed suit, modifying a lawyer’s duty of competence to include knowledge of substantive law as well as “the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.”

Legal analytics is not new. For hundreds of years, litigators have capitalized on the advantages of evidence-based decision making. This is, in fact, largely how the law works. Litigators serve their clients by using their legal reasoning skills to apply specific facts to particular laws. They do this by collecting evidence and by identifying the relevant statutes, cases, or rules that may support their case. For many years, this was a tedious and laborious process. However, recent innovations in legal technologies have expanded the depth and the breadth of legal research, allowing litigators to quickly mine, parse, synthesize, and utilize large bodies of public and private records.

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