From the story in Vox … “Surprisingly, just letting people get on the plane in an order unrelated to their seats leads to slightly faster boarding times than the standard method.”
Month: November 2014
Using R for Quantitative Methods for Lawyers and Legal Analytics Courses (Professors Katz + Bommarito)
While its performance is sometimes problematic for some extremely large data problems, R (with R studio frontend) is the data science language du jour for many small to medium data problems. Among other things, R is great because it is open source, hyper customizable with thousands of packages available to be loaded for a specific problem.
While Python and SQL are also important parts of the overall data science toolkit, we use R as our preferred language in both Quantitative Methods for Lawyers (3 credits) as well as in our Legal Analytics course (2 credits). We have found that students who are diligent can make amazing strides in a relatively short amount of time. For example, see this final project by Pat Ellis from last year’s course.
Here are some introductory resources that we have developed to get folks started: Loading R and R Studio
R Boot Camp – Part 1 – Loading Datasets and Basic Data Exploration
Data Cleaning and Additional Resources
R Boot Camp – Part 2 – Statistical Tests Using R
Basic Data Visualization in R
Scatter Plots, Covariance, Correlation Using R
Intro to Regression Analysis Using R
Over the balance of the 2014-2015 academic year, Mike and I will be introducing a variety of new things to the quantitative sequence including dplyR, etc. … more to come …
New Company Developing a Market for the Crowdfunding of Lawsuits
This is pretty interesting and sort of highlights the serious need to have better forecasting models (see our interest in topics such as quantitative legal prediction, legal analytics, etc.)
Why The Best Supreme Court Predictor In The World Is Some Random Guy In Queens (via 538.com)
Nice coverage of the research in this area and our multi year research agenda attached to forecasting using the three known streams of intelligence (experts, crowds & algorithms).
Katz + Bommarito Joining Forces for Joint Research Activities with CodeX – Stanford Center for Legal Informatics
While our primary home will remain here MSU Law, Mike Bommarito and I are excited to be joining up with the good folks at CodeX – Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. Based upon our shared interests, we plan to work together on some joint research activities with some of the many talented individuals in the Stanford CodeX ecosystem. I will be joining CodeX as an External Affiliated Faculty and Mike will be joining as a CodeX Fellow. We are very excited to push forward together in the short, medium and long term!
Innovation and Emerging Legal Technology (Slides by Ron Dolin from Stanford Center on the Legal Profession)
This past Thursday Ron Dolin and I spole on a panel at the 19th Annual Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute Law Firm Leaders Forum. Above are Ron’s slides which many of you might find interesting. Below is a modified version of my presentation Five Observations Regarding Technology and the Legal Industry (which I gave at the LegalWeek Corporate Counsel Forum last month).
Thanks to Ralph Baxter (Chairman Emeritus @ Orrick) for inviting me to present to this extremely accomplished group of AMLaw 200 managing partners.
Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted (via EFF)
I have filed an Amicus Brief (of sorts) via Facebook …
The 19th Annual Law Firm Leaders Forum – NYC (Presented by Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute)
Tomorrow I will be speaking at the 19th Annual Law Firm Leaders Forum in NYC (Presented by Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute). This annual event draws a large number of leaders from the AMLaw 200 law firms. The focus of my panel will be the Emerging Role of Technology in the Law Firm Model. I am joined by a world class faculty which includes representatives from Law firms, In House, Legal Tech and the Legal Academy, etc.