Stanford-Bred Startup Uses Moneyball Stats To Handicap Judges, Lawyers by Daniel Fisher.
From the post:
If you’re being sued for patent infringement before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, there’s something you ought to know. Koh is tough on defendants and only grants 18% of motions for summary judgment, less than half the national average. So your lawyers had better be on their game before they try to convince Koh to chuck out the case, and you’d better have a fallback strategy in case she doesn’t.
These stats are just a sample of what a venture-funded startup with roots in a project funded by Cisco Systems and Apple is doing to bring mathematical analysis to the arcane world of litigation. Where Lexis and Westlaw tell attorneys what the law is, Lex Machina tells them what actually happens in the courtroom.
The system, focusing for now on the litigation-intense world of patent law, has compiled an exhaustive database of patent cases going back to 2000 so companies and lawyers can determine how many times a patent has been the subject of litigation and how the lawsuits were resolved. Lex Machina also handicaps law firms based on their win-loss records before specific judges with specific procedural maneuvers, so in-house attorneys can determine who to hire.
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As Daniel points out, this service is limited to patent law at the moment but it is a wide open field otherwise. The data is in the public domain (court records) and the real rub is going to be efficient collection of the data.
To a future startup: Be mindful that the same techniques demonstrated here can also be applied to legislators, legislation and campaign contributions at local, state and federal levels.
Your clients can avoid over-paying for largely ineffectual members of Congress and not under bidding for state house speakers when losing isn’t an option.
Handicapping judges, lawyers, legislators won’t ever be 100%, modulo illegal inducements, but you can play your best hand more often.
Realize that other than the offensive terminology, “handicapping,” and the level of detail, this sort of knowledge of local judges was accumulated ad hoc by lawyers in a particular jurisdiction. One of the main reasons for hiring “local” counsel.
The advantage that Lex Machina offers is that the knowledge is detailed and can be offered to anyone willing to pay for it.
Now would be a good time for public spirited foundations to start public handicapping of judges and lawyers projects. Just as an example, rather than election year or episodic reports of judges discriminating against battered women, such a process could provide current a real time view into the operation of the judiciary.
I first saw this in a tweet by Carl Anderson.