AI in Litigation: 7 Ways Legal Technology Can Improve Litigation Workflows

Researching opposing counsel

Are you trying to find information about an opposing lawyer? If so, you can research a particular law firm or attorney to gather information about that firm or lawyer’s clients and case types, where they’ve litigated, and their litigation history.

Easy access to dockets provides a true wealth of information and valuable insights into the lawyers you’re up against, including:

• Strategies and arguments used in a similar case they’re likely to reprise in your case
• Past arguments they’ve made in similar cases that are incompatible with those in the present case
• Any past sanctions reflected in other dockets
• Patterns worth noting as precautions, such as a history of contentious discovery disputes

Analyzing the judge’s case history

One of the benefits of AI in law is arming yourself with deeper analytical content to better understand possible outcomes, timing, and case costs when advising clients on strategy. While litigation analytics tools won’t predict how the judge will decide the motion, they can offer data points that help you understand a judge’s past work, including:

• The judge’s most cited opinions
• How likely the judge is to grant or deny a particular motion
• How often the judge gets affirmed or reversed on appeal
• The length of a typical case
• Which attorneys, companies, or areas of law the judge sees most often
• Relevant court opinions by that judge
• Dockets for matters before that judge

These insights can help you ascertain how experienced the court is in the relevant issues, note any important patterns in rulings or scheduling, and evaluate how the judge has handled similar past cases.

For example, if you’re considering filing a particular type of motion, such as a sanctions motion, you can determine how frequently your judge grants sanctions motions. You can also see how similar cases before your judge proceeded through discovery. Does the court assign discovery to a magistrate? What dates are set, and at what preliminary intervals, in the court’s standard scheduling order? Does the court have a history of granting motions to extend time? Will the court allow lawyers to appear by telephone at hearings? All these questions can often be answered with AI-powered litigation analytics.

Keep in mind that statistics and data are subject to understanding and interpretation. In the best case, analytical tools show something is happening or predict that something may happen, but the tool won’t tell you why that trend is occurring. For example, an analytics tool might give you motion or appeal outcome statistics, but it can’t tell you why the percentage is what it is. It may show you that one type of case takes longer to resolve than another, but it will never tell you why.

Conducting comprehensive legal research

Research is a cornerstone of a lawyer’s skill set. With the advent of artificial intelligence-driven legal research technologies, the days of sifting through irrelevant court opinions are over. AI litigation tools use machine learning to identify legal principles, standards, and elements in court opinions and then present the most relevant cases concerning the topic at issue. This can help you quickly ascertain where and how similar cases are pending, find cases filed by the same plaintiff, or track legal actions against a specific client.

These AI-powered docket search tools are useful in almost every legal research scenario. For example, if you’re working on a motion to dismiss, you can search for motions to dismiss filed before the same judge discussing similar legal issues. Reviewing similar motions can point you to helpful case law you may want to cite or give you ideas for how to structure your arguments. You can also find orders issued on those motions to gain insight into which arguments the judge found persuasive, and which arguments were unsuccessful.

These tools can also help you locate cases discussing novel issues. If there are only a few cases nationwide regarding a specific issue, topic, or area of the law – each in various stages of litigation – tracking the status of each can provide a useful glimpse into arguments, potential pitfalls, and evolving precedent to cite or distinguish in your case.

Remember, even though a tool may use a fancy algorithm to find a case on point more efficiently, attorneys must still conduct due diligence to confirm their results. While utilizing research tools that employ artificial intelligence or machine learning is a huge benefit, it doesn’t absolve lawyers from ensuring those results are complete and accurate.

Analyzing case briefs

Reviewing and analyzing a brief is a time-consuming task. But AI-driven legal technologies can increase the quality and breadth of an attorney’s research while reducing the time required to prepare a response.

These tools use machine learning to quickly analyze the arguments and authorities in a legal brief and help you spot holes, review citations and quotes for accuracy, find or check authority, and jump-start a response. When used to analyze an opponent’s brief, these tools can suggest relevant cases that you may not have thought to research. You can also see whether your opponent missed (or avoided) any key decisions that may help in crafting a response or reply brief.

Monitoring case developments and risks

Finally, as the litigation progresses, you’ll want to keep an eye out for anything that could impact your client’s case. Given the sheer volume of new legal filings each day, legal AI tools are useful for parsing the influx of new data to find new cases filed on a particular legal topic or to track new filings in existing cases.

Docket search tools can help you see if a plaintiff files a similar case in another jurisdiction, which is particularly useful when you’re litigating a case involving a novel issue and want to track such cases filed throughout the country.

Bloomberg Law’s legal platform goes a step further by enabling users to create customized alerts for specific types of cases and particular issues, and for existing clients. Since our docket tool is updated so frequently, if you set an alert for your client as the defendant, you may even be alerted to the case before they’re served with the complaint.