Lex Machina’s state court analytics are built on documents, giving users unique advantages when strategizing in the business and practice of law. Because we use a combination of natural language processing and human review of state documents, the results are the most accurate, complete, and transparent litigation analytics available. Additionally, we have unique features including the new state court “fetch” functionality that allows users to retrieve documents for any of our available state court systems.
Systematic collection for all of Lex Machina’s state courts
Litigation analytics for state courts presents a particular challenge because each court has its own docketing system, rather than a unified system such as PACER in federal court. Lex Machina does the difficult work of understanding the individual docketing practice of each state court system and creates accurate analytics that reflect the unique aspects of the individual courts.
Lex Machina’s system updates daily with new information from state court dockets. Then the documents are tagged and key filings are downloaded into the Lex Machina system. Key filings include pleadings, judgments, and verdicts, as well as court-specific documents such as minute orders in California courts and Notice of Entry in New York courts.
Natural language processing creates unique data sets
By going through this process, Lex Machina enhances the overall dataset by adding entities and outcomes that are not readily available from the court’s docketing system. For example, our Signature Block Analyzer is able to retrieve attorney information only available within court documents. We have also created processes to polish judge data and ensure that every case has an accurate judge listing, rather than relying solely on docket information or metadata that may include out-of-date information.
Using this process, we are able to provide complete statistics for judges, counsel, and parties for each state court we cover.
Attorney document review analyzes what happened at trial
After a case is tagged and reviewed by our natural language processing system, our data team, (consisting of attorneys and legal analysts) reviews important documents to verify what happened. Then the information is presented in easy-to-use tables, graphs, and charts, so that users can quickly assess the record of a judge, counsel, or party. Users can discover whether plaintiffs or defendants win more often in front of their judge or see all cases with bench or jury trials where opposing counsel appeared.
Lex Machina has important Outcome Analytics for state courts including:
- Case rulings
- Case resolutions
- Damages awarded at trial
This high-value data would not be available if not for our data team looking at underlying documents.
Key Features: Document search and retrieval
Because our state court analytics were built using documents, millions of documents are already available in our system for users to discover. Users can keyword search to find relevant information within documents in order to gain even greater insights into the judges’ reasoning or opposing counsels’ record.
Lex Machina users can retrieve any document of interest that is available from the courts’ online filing systems. Once retrieved, those documents then stay available in Lex Machina for all users, which further enriches the available data. This feature is incredibly important to users, as each use case is unique. Our customers can dig into the details of cases like theirs by searching for certain motions or orders and getting insights far beyond the docket entry text.
By systematically collecting documents, Lex Machina has created the most comprehensive datasets on judges, counsel, and parties. We go above and beyond what others are doing in state court. Through natural language processing and attorney review, Lex Machina enables users to obtain added information that allows them to quickly assess what happened in previous cases. Users can delve further by keyword searching or retrieving documents of interest, thereby taking advantage of the ability to look both at the big picture and a case-by-case analysis. These processes and features produce the most accurate, complete, and transparent litigation analytics available in state court.
Spend 15 minutes with one of our Legal Analytics experts today to test drive Lex Machina and see for yourself how our data-driven insights can help you with your next matter.