How can the analytics in Lex Machina provide a full picture of this practice area?
Sam: In a basic sense, Civil Rights has everything that most other practice areas do–damages, injunctions, findings, appeals. But the requests for relief in Civil Rights cases typically pursue two avenues. The first avenue is seeking monetary relief, such as compensatory or punitive damages. The second avenue is asking for non-monetary relief, like a declaratory judgment or the creation of a new municipal policy. One of the things that Lex Machina does well is capture relief that is granted above and beyond any monetary award or injunction. For example, we have a remedies filter that tracks the remedies awarded in Civil Rights cases, such as ADA Remediation and Non-ADA Remediation, which reflect relief that is granted pertaining to things like ordering that there be more police training or mandating the creation of new policies and procedures.
Sam: I always like to start with our Summary tab. [Summary provides a snapshot of how many Civil Rights cases are being filed each year in the District Courts]. In order to see this snapshot, I apply Civil Rights within the Case Types filter.
Sam: When I start with the Summary first, I’m orienting myself to the landscape, or the baseline, of Civil Rights litigation so that I’m accurately understanding the big picture before diving in more deeply. The Summary shows the district courts with the largest number of Civil Rights cases, the judges who have the largest Civil Rights case dockets, as well as a column on the right showing me the crossover between the Civil Rights cases I’ve selected and each of the other practice areas Lex Machina offers.
Sam: We can also see our customizable case list down below that allows me to look at the thousands of Civil Rights cases through the lens I need to understand them through. For example, if I don’t care about the case number, I might replace that column with the Civil Rights Findings column so I can see specific rulings at a glance throughout the case list.
Sam: Civil rights being applied as a Case Type is more broad, so I do like to look at the case tags underneath it as well. These subcategories are found in our Case Tags filter. For example, let’s say I only want to look at Police Action cases. I can apply that Case Tag option by selecting the plus sign next to Police Action and apply it.
Sam: Perhaps I am working on a police case and need to write a motion addressed to a particular judge. One thing I may need to know before I write that motion is how often this judge has dealt with police cases so that I can determine how much I need to bolster my legal arguments to inform them of the law. To do this, I’d use the District Judges and/or Magistrate Judges filter in conjunction with the Police Action Case Tag filter.
Sam: From this, I can see that Judge Seeger has both an abundance of police cases on his current docket and continues to be assigned new police cases each year. As a result, I can now use that information, and the cases in the Summary page case list, to determine how I want to best go about crafting my motion to him.
Another thing that I can do within Police Action cases is craft arguments with the help of our Findings filter. Let’s say I am arguing about qualified immunity and need to insert a couple of supportive parentheticals into my motion about a police defendant that won their qualified immunity argument. What I would do is navigate to our Civil Rights Findings filter and select “Qualified Immunity” as my finding, in addition to applying the court I need in the Courts filter.
Sam: By applying a Finding to my results, this is now showing me every Police Action case within my specified court where Qualified Immunity was granted.
Sam: Since I’ve got more than 200 cases appearing, maybe I want to narrow my cases to those rulings that have taken place in only the last couple of years. So, I could utilize our Pending filter by setting the “From” date to January 1, 2023, and then clicking Apply, which will give me a much smaller case list to sift through and select from.
Sam: If I really wanted to dive even deeper, I could even add one more filter atop that–my judge–to see if my specific judge had recently granted qualified immunity to any police defendants and, thus, I could tailor my parenthetical even more specifically in my motion.
Sam: To me, Legal Analytics is so much more than tracked wins and losses. Not only can Legal Analytics be used to look at damages awarded or cases closed, but it can also give guidance for a motion drafting strategy, understanding an audience, preparing pleadings for filing, and even giving a client an understanding of the landscape of lawsuits like theirs and what kind of litigation path they may be walking over the coming months or years.