Ravel Law

Mar 1, 2021

Shares0 Back in 2018, LexisNexis unveiled their Context application, taking Ravel Law’s AI technology, marrying it to the LexisNexis data, and producing a remarkable “killer application” for legal artificial intelligence. By typing in the name of your judge, the system would show not just their record in adjudicating substantially similar questions but highlight the exact language and case citations that the judge defaults to whenever hearing that issue. The initial launch also gathered expert reports allowing easy reference to root out the mercenary expert who flip-flops on specific issues every time the wind blows. Last year, the company expanded the offering to include company data , providing an easily navigable snapshot of a company’s litigation and news profile. Today, the company announces the latest extension of the Context universe — Contextiverse? — the ability to search attorneys. With Context Attorney Analytics, you can find opposing counsel instantly and highlight the instances where your issue has come up before and see exactly how your adversary handled it. Just as you might use the judge analytics, now you can see the language and citations that attorneys routinely deploy putting you in a position to predict the key points to distinguish in your new filing. From the overview screen, you get a good primer on your research target. From here you can drill down to look up some of these many mentions, or jump into the arguments in context with a wide array of available filters. That’s where the real fun begins. How many hours did associates bill to compiling that sort of data? It might sound dismissive, to say that nothing about this announcement surprised me, but that’s not the intention. I think everybody who saw the initial Judge and Expert Analytics tool knew that something like this was coming. It’s the next logical step in the continuing evolution of the LexisNexis Context offerings. Wherever there are insights to be had, it was inevitable that Context would make it there. With a few keystrokes, Context Attorney Analytics extracts and highlights the exact language an attorney has used in briefs, pleadings, motions and arguments in cases that are similar to yours and shows how well they fared in court. In addition, its comprehensive search and robust filtering capabilities can deliver relevant attorney-related content, including new stories, jury verdicts and settlements, expert witness materials, and more, eliminating hours of research. “Knowing the language that opposing counsel has successfully used in similar court cases can give attorneys critical insights and a tremendous advantage when preparing for trial,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO, LexisNexis North America. “No other analytics offering directly connects legal language argument activity and written judicial opinions for specific attorneys.” While the focus of the discussion around the product focuses on the value it brings to understanding opposing counsel — which is undoubtedly the best long-term application of the technology — it strikes me that it could provide some measure of the self-reflection the profession historically lacks. Type in your own name and see if you’ve managed to become a one-trick pony yourself. Have you developed crutches that others might easily exploit? When the Judge Analytics tool came out, the unconfirmed rumor floating around was that judges were furiously checking up on themselves. Folks on the other side of the bench might be surprised what they can learn about themselves.