Legal Analytics vs. Legal Research: What’s the Difference?
For hundreds of years, litigators have served their clients by applying facts to law using legal reasoning. To identify relevant law—statutes, cases, rules—to apply to the facts of a case, lawyers conduct legal research. Performing accurate legal research remains a core skill of successful lawyering. But over the past few years a new tool has appeared in litigators’ toolkits: legal analytics. Legal analytics involves mining data contained in case documents and docket entries, and then aggregating that data to provide previously unknowable insights into the behavior of the individuals (judges and lawyers), organizations (parties, courts, law firms), and the subjects [...]
TC Heartland, Legal Trends, One Year Later
This is a follow up post to an earlier discussion of the Supreme Court’s venue-altering decision. One year later, it is clear that there is a significant shift in where patent cases are being filed, with many more cases in Delaware since TC Heartland narrowed the rules for venue. Texas, by contrast, has seen a significant drop in filings, but is still a favored arena for some plaintiffs. For the time being, Texas judges continue to have a significant impact on the patent litigation landscape.
Lex Machina Q4 2017 End of the Year Litigation Update
In the final quarter of 2017, a total of 981 patent cases were filed in U.S. District Courts, a 1.3% decrease over the previous quarter’s total of 994 cases. Cases filed in the calendar year 2017 (4,057 cases) represent a decline of 10.3% over 2016 (with 4,529 cases). Despite the decline, Figure 2 shows that 2017 continues the pattern of relatively consistent monthly totals that has persisted since the dramatic spike in 2015 (caused by the end of Form 18).
Lex Machina Launches Legal Analytics for Product Liability Litigation
Lex Machina is pleased to announce the launch of our module for Product Liability litigation. This launch more than doubles the number of cases in the Lex Machina system, and brings legal analytics to one of the largest practice areas in the U.S. District Courts. Practitioners can analyze the nearly 500,000 cases pending since 2009 to see how judges, parties, or law firms have behaved in litigation. This data can not only help in-house lawyers identify winning outside counsel or help a law firm pitch it’s experience, but can also help lawyers on both sides make better strategic and tactical [...]
Patent Litigation Trends in the Three Months after T.C. Heartland
This blog post focuses specifically on patent litigation trends; for a broader discussion of other litigation trends in Q3, see our update here. On May 22, 2017, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in T.C. Heartland, holding unanimously that, under 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b) (the statute governing venue in patent suits), a domestic corporation “resides” only in its state of incorporation. Since that landmark decision, patent case filings trends have responded dramatically: the number of cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas has significantly declined and been overtaken by the number of cases filed in the District of Delaware. [...]
Lex Machina Q3 2017 Litigation Update
For a more in-depth consideration of patent litigation trends around the Supreme Court’s landmark T.C. Heartland ruling, see this companion post. 995 patent cases were filed in the third quarter of 2017, a 12.3% decrease from the number of cases filed in last quarter. A drop from the second to third quarter has occurred in each of the past 4 years. Relative to the number of cases filed in 2016 through the third quarter, filings in 2017 are down 8.4%.
Lex Machina Launches Legal Analytics for Bankruptcy Appeals in District Court
Lex Machina is pleased to announce the launch of our offering for Bankruptcy Appeals in District Court. With this launch, practitioners can, for the first time ever, get hard quantitative data on how parties, law firms, and judges perform on bankruptcy appeals. Practitioners, especially bankruptcy court specialists, facing an unfamiliar district judge in an appeal can research the prior experience of the judge, seeing what issues they have encountered in past cases, and whether they’ve upheld the Bankruptcy court on those issues. Companies can find counsel who have a winning record on the issues that matter most, as well [...]
2017 Second Quarter Litigation Update
1,138 patent cases were filed in the second quarter of 2017, a 18% increase over number of cases filed in the first quarter of 2017. A similar increase from the first to second quarter has happened in each of the previous 4 years. Although the number of cases filed in the first quarter of 2017 was one of the lowest in the last 5 years, the first half of 2017 only trails 2016’s first half by 7%.