Robert Ambrogi Blog
Sixteen months ago, LexisNexis introduced Context, an analytics product that did what no other analytics product did, which was analyze the language of a judge’s opinions to identify the cases and arguments the judge finds persuasive. Later, it expanded Context to cover not just individual judges, but also entire courts.
Today, LexisNexis is launching a further expansion of the product, Context Company Analytics, which will be available to subscribers of Lexis Advance. This is now the fourth module for Context’s analytics, as the original release also covered expert witnesses. Still in development are lawyer and law firm analytics.
To understand what makes Context unique among analytics tools in the legal market, it might help to look back at the original release.
As I wrote at the time, other litigation analytics products, such as Lex Machina, which is also a LexisNexis product, or Westlaw Edge, are based on analysis of court dockets. Those products can tell you information such as how long a particular type of case is likely to last, how a judge is likely to rule on a particular type of issue, or how other lawyers have fared before a particular judge. Such information is derived from the docket.
By contrast, Context analyzes the text of court documents to find language and citations that could prove persuasive to a particular judge. Specifically, it tells you how a judge has ruled on 100 different types of motions and the judges, cases and text the judge most commonly relied on in making those rulings.
The company analytics product being released today takes that text analysis in a slightly different direction, combining and cross-referencing a company’s litigation history with news events, financial data and executive information. It covers more than 2.5 million public and private companies and is able to recognize the various entities and subsidiaries under which a company does business.
Using machine learning and natural language processing, it identifies and visualizes correlations among news events, litigation and financial performance for a company. It draws on five years of information extracted from multiple legal news sources, including Law360, business journals and national newspapers; litigation data coming from dockets and caselaw; and corporate financial information from Nexis Dossier.
Based on a preview demonstration given to me yesterday by Serena Wellen, senior director at LexisNexis, the most striking feature of Context’s company analytics is what it calls Storylines. These are key events in a company’s timeline tied together thematically by litigation and news coverage.
As the image above shows, for Ford Motor Company, one such Storyline involved litigation over allegedly defective Ford 150 door locks. The Storyline shows a timeline of both news articles and litigation matters related to this, and users can drill down into either set of sources to see news stories, litigation documents, and judges’ opinions.
Other analytics within Context show which firms are representing companies and for which types of matters. Filters enable you to hone in on specific topics of law, courts, motion types, and date ranges.
LexisNexis says this product should be useful to attorneys in assessing the current challenges their clients face and in evaluating litigation trends and risks.
It should also be useful to firms for competitive intelligence and business development, in helping them size up the companies and firms they are litigating against or in identifying opportunities for their own firm.
As of today’s launch, Context Company Analytics covers all public companies, as well as all private and international companies that have had litigation in U.S. courts. It also provides profiles on large private companies of 100 or more employees that have no litigation history.
“Context is first and only caselaw language solution,” Wellen said. “What’s unique about Company Analytics is we’ve extended that approach to news, so you can visualize the correlation between a company’s news events and litigation activity.”
Part of the Lexis Analytics suite of products, Context Company Analytics is available by subscription via LexisNexis’s legal research platform, Lexis Advance. More information is available at: www.lexisnexis.com/context.