The latest development from litigation analytics company Lex Machina brings a significant enhancement to the analytics available for federal district civil cases. The firm has incorporated an additional 500,000 federal district court cases into its data set, ensuring coverage of nearly every civil case filed in U.S. federal district courts. This expansion excludes only prisoner petitions, which are deemed commercially irrelevant to their primary clientele: law firms and corporate entities. With this update, Lex Machina now provides access to an analytics platform with comprehensive scope, having integrated the remaining 15% of district court cases that were not previously categorized under one of their 22 major practice areas.
Carla Rydholm, general manager and head of product at Lex Machina, emphasizes the significance of this coverage expansion, noting, “We have the ability to provide coverage of every commercially relevant case.” The expansion allows users to perform cross-case analysis without the need to filter by a specific case type initially, then enables deeper exploration based on courts, judges, parties, counsel and more.
To enhance its analytics, Lex Machina also introduced new tags for categories like admiralty/maritime, forfeiture/penalty, FOIA, immigration, and RICO. While some cases will remain uncategorized, they will still present the federal nature-of-suit code from the original filing. This data, collected from over 17.5 million documents, now enriches the Lexis+ platform, also owned by LexisNexis, providing a complete federal court view that spans across various analytical factors such as outcomes, damages, and remedies.
Beyond expanding its coverage, Lex Machina continues to refine its tools with the launch of features like ‘Custom Columns’ for streamlined reporting and ‘Findings Search’ to pinpoint relevant case-specific findings. Originally a 2006 Stanford Law School research project focused on patent cases, Lex Machina has, since its acquisition by LexisNexis in 2015, broadened its horizon through state court expansions and the inclusion of federal appeals court analytics.
This substantial update not only broadens Lex Machina’s capacity to offer data-driven insights into litigation but also fortifies its role as an influential player in the realm of legal analytics. For more detailed insights into the full range of functionalities now available, visit the full article.