On March 7, 2024, Lex Machina hosted a webcast on the recently released 2024 Securities Report. The webcast featured guest speakers Kevin McDonough (Partner at Latham & Watkins) and Laura Hopkins (Lex Machina’s Legal Data Expert in Securities Litigation), moderated by Aria Nejad (Lex Machina’s In-house Counsel). They discussed overarching trends in securities litigation including case filing, most active judges and venues, top law firms and parties, timing, case resolutions, findings, damages, and more. They also discussed emerging trends in general securities cases, shareholder derivative suits, class action securities cases, cryptocurrency cases, SPAC cases, and securities appellate cases. Their analysis demonstrated how using Legal Analytics can enhance your practice when litigating securities disputes.
In discussing the data on judges, Kevin McDonough said, “We use it from the very earliest stage of a new case to try to understand the particular characteristics of the judge: what seems to be working in front of the judge that’s assigned to our case, what may not be working, what sort of predictive analysis we can do for our clients based on that data. For us, it’s been really a game changer. . . . [Now that we] have the data, we’re not relying on just anecdotal experience in front of various judges. When we can look at what kind of cases these judges are seeing, how they’re resolving them, it allows us to develop a strategy that’s tailored specifically to that judge, and we found it to be really effective.”
In discussing the data on time to key litigation milestones, Kevin McDonough said, “we find this timing data really important, and especially when we break it down judge by judge, because so often our clients want to know if the case survives a motion to dismiss. What are the milestones after that point? What are my potential off-ramps in the case and how long will it take to get to each one of those? That becomes important for clients and their insurance carriers . . . we find it really important to have a roadmap for what’s going to happen in the next six to 18 months, and we use this data all the time to develop that roadmap.”
Listen to a recording of the webcast or read the transcript.