At the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, at least three companies exhibiting there were touting their tools for judge analytics.

It is a big data phenomenon. The quantity and variety of online information about and by judges reveals information about them that would have been virtually impossible to compile just a decade ago.

So who are these companies and what sorts of judge analytics do they provide? Here are three:

Lex Machina. Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics uses sophisticated software to analyze intellectual property cases. It extracts information from PACER federal court records, the USPTO and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Among the kinds of questions it says it can help answer are:

• How likely is a judge to grant or deny a specific motion?

• How long do cases take to terminate, get to trial, or get to the claim construction hearing before a judge?

• How likely is a judge to find patents, trademarks or copyrights infringed, invalid, or unenforceable?

 

Ravel Law. Ravel Law’s Judge Analytics promises to provide litigators with “never-before-available information and analysis about how individual federal court judges make decisions.” It pulls together data on the cases a judge has authored and the cases a judge cites to, as well as an analysis of other judges who have influenced them and other jurisdictions they consider most persuasive.

Users can examine how judges handled specific legal issues and find the exact sentences that judges like to copy and paste from opinion to opinion. Specifically, you can find:

• All of the opinions a judge has authored.

• All of the cases a judge has cited in those opinions.

• The frequency with which the judge cites specific circuits, judges and cases.

• How a judge applies the law in specific types of cases.

• How a judge relied on a specific cited case.

 

ALM Judicial Profiles. The legal news and information company ALM has offered judicial profiles for several years but is now making a push to further build it out. It provides access to judges’ case histories, biographical information and references in the news, and also lists lists lawyers and firms who have appeared before them in court.

As it now stands, ALM’s Judicial Profiles provides the following information for the judges it profiles:

• Biographical information.

• Case data, including data on active cases, opened cases and closed cases; cases by nature of suit; and specific details on active cases. The data can be filtered by nature of suit, data range, status and firms involved.

• Data on law firm appearances before the judge, showing the top firms and top attorneys and the cases they are involved in. The information can be filtered by nature of suit, date range and name of firm.

• Recent news stories mentioning the judge.