E-discovery firm DISCO has announced a long-term licensing agreement with international legal research company vLex to gain access to its U.S. primary law library. This resource comprises a broad selection of U.S legal information, including cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions.
The move is designed to augment DISCO’s core platform by integrating the vast legal research data derived from vLex. An explicit goal is to facilitate a symbiotic relationship between factual development and legal analysis. This integration would enable litigators to scrutinize factual patterns against the backdrop of relevant law.
Katie DeBord, DISCO’s Vice President of Product Strategy, envisions “a seamless integrated user experience, where litigators can quickly identify relevant legal precedents with similar fact patterns or analyze patterns based on relevant law”. She also envisages the fusion of this legal knowledge into their platform as a means to somewhat dynamically organize the facts of a case.
This move will also empower lawyers with technology that can potentially enhance how cases are handled from their inception to their completion. The application of technology here would be to organize both the facts of their case and the applicable laws based on aspects of the case that need to be proven or disproven.
Added benefits for DISCO’s clientele that are foreseen from including this legal research data into their platform include the potential for creating risk assessments that hinge on the facts against the applicable law, identifying similar factual patterns, deploying artificial intelligence for complex law-related queries, and pinpointing case law relevant to the causes of action while minimizing the use of multiple products.
Furthermore, DeBord labels this integration as a crucial step towards their larger strategic plan. In essence, she envisions DISCO evolving into an all-encompassing platform that can adeptly manage the most vital aspects of intricate litigation processes.
It is worthy to note that vLex expanded its U.S. legal research materials earlier this year by acquiring Fastcase. This additional legal data repository would further bolster the value DISCO’s customers derive from this licensing agreement.
For more details about this development, please follow this link.