Law.com Radar, a service providing AI-enhanced alerts for new lawsuits filed in over 2,400 U.S. federal and state courts, has begun tagging all new civil filings using the SALI Alliance taxonomy, a system designed to standardize legal data across the industry. According to Vanessa Blum, vice president of innovation at ALM, the parent company of Law.com Radar, this advancement ensures users can create more precise and granular searches and customized case alerts across federal and state jurisdictions.
Previously, Radar classified federal cases using their nature-of-suit (NOS) codes and state cases into general practice areas. With the adoption of SALI tags, all cases, both federal and state, are now labeled with more specific and detailed tags, enhancing the granularity of the information. This transition addresses the issue of inconsistent case-type labeling across various court systems by using a proprietary machine learning model designed to identify specific case types.
Blum noted that SALI’s advanced taxonomy allows for greater detail in case identification. For example, instead of broadly categorizing a case as an employment lawsuit, it can now be tagged as a wage-and-hour class action or a gender-based employment discrimination case. This level of detail ensures that users receive more accurate alerts about new filings and can easily exclude less relevant cases.
One notable feature of Radar’s system is its ability to apply SALI tags to cases even in jurisdictions where electronic access is unavailable. For approximately 350 courts, they utilize manual runners to collect complaints, which are then scanned and processed through OCR to apply the tags.
Damien Riehl, a leader of the SALI Alliance, praised ALM’s decision to integrate SALI into Radar, stating it represents a significant step in establishing SALI as the standard for the legal industry. While other groups also work on data standardization, SALI’s momentum and comprehensive approach provide much-needed consistency and actionability across jurisdictions.
ALM’s decision to adopt SALI over other standards aligns with their goal to offer a system that is both widely applicable and detailed enough to meet the needs of their users. As BLum mentioned, the adoption of a standardized system like SALI simplifies the integration process for customers, especially as ALM focuses on developing APIs.
Launched in 2020, Law.com Radar initially offered custom-tailored federal court docket alerts and expanded last year to include state court dockets. The basic version covering federal litigation updates is offered for free, with paid subscriptions starting at $19.99 per month. Subscription details can be viewed here.
For more detailed information about the recent integration and the additional capabilities it brings, visit the full article on LawNext.