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Is Big Data Transforming the Legal Industry?

Elite AsiaLegalIs Big Data Transforming the Legal Industry?
16 September 2020 Posted by eliteasia Legal Technology No Comments

Although data analysis is a new concept to the legal industry, many other professions have been using big data for years. Taking football as an example, each team will hire their own group of expert data analysers who are constantly tracking and looking at rival teams. They will look at hours and hours of video footage to analysis information such as weaknesses, skills and even on the players’ pattern in shooting penalty kicks.

For the world of law, data analytics is just as – if not more – important. There is always a breadth of information that could be used to bring a competitive edge to a case. The problem is, unlike in a sports environment – the amount and source of useable data associated with a law case is massive, making it incredibly difficult to cipher through. Items include witness testimony, trial outcomes, trial reports, precedents and court decisions to name a few. However, as problematic as this is to work through, analysing this data efficiently could be fundamental for a law firm to win a case.

One of the biggest problems with big data in the legal profession is jargon. For most people, reading through a legal document will feel like it’s mostly gibberish. So, to teach a software tool how to read and understand these documents is far more difficult than it would be in other industries. Elite Asia’s professional e-discovery solutions and legal glossary created by experienced linguists facilitate information retrieval speedily and accurately.

Another problem is emotion. True, many court cases are won on hard evidence alone, which a computer programme can understand and decipher. However, cases can also be won by winning over your jurors emotionally or through the charisma of the accused, which is far from black and white, and undoubtedly a much harder concept for software to understand.

Both of these issues point to a real flaw in the possible future of big data being used in the law industry. Anomalies aside, though, is it still useful for those in the law profession?

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Technology is Constantly Evolving

As problematic as some aspects of big data is, with technologies constantly evolving and advancing, these problems should be solved over time. For one, many of the software that is used to analyse legal data is run by AI bots that are learning and adapting more with every new piece of legal data that they receive.

Big data generated by AI is expectedly becoming more accurate and useful over time. For instance, a law firm can look at the data associated with a certain judge, looking at every decision that he or she has made in their career. This will allow a law firm to predict how a judge might react in a case before the trial even hits the courts.

Big Data Has Endless Possibilities in the Law Industry

At the moment, it is mainly being thought of as a way for law firms to research effectively and predict the outcome of a trial. However, with technologies becoming smarter every day, it’s exciting to wonder where this data mining will take the legal industry in the future.

In the future, big data might be fundamental in creating new laws, a fairer legal system and even make unfair verdicts a thing of the past.

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