Tag: data mining

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Selling Pieces of Law Firms to Investors [via NY Times]

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Having recently returned from the LegalFutures.co.uk meeting on alternative business structures (ABS), I can report there are number of important developments taking place across the pond. Developing the next generation of legal service delivery is question of supply chain, scale efficiency, software aided point of sale legal practice, access to capital markets, marketing,  queueing theory, legal information technology – you know – all of the things that we teach students in law school (see my MIT School of Law proposal for a potential way forward — #icebergsahead )

For additional thoughts and related questions – check out Renee Knake’s round up @ Legal Ethics Forum and last month’s Unlocking the Law Symposium @ Truth on the Market.

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Judges in Jeopardy? – Actually – It is Lawyers in Jeopardy

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While I really appreciate the spirit of this article, I have to say that the question posed by the author is not actually the critical one.  As noted by Larry Ribstein in his post “Lawyers in Jeopardy” — the primary question raised by Watson and other forms of soft to medium artificial intelligence is their impact on the market for legal services. In thinking about this broader problem, I am haunted by the line from There Will be Blood – “I Drink Your Milkshake.”  In this metaphor, technology is the straw and the legal information engineer is Daniel Day Lewis.

It is worth noting that although high-end offerings such as Watson represent a looming threat to a variety of professional services — one need not look to something as lofty as Watson to realize the future is likely to be turbulent. Law’s Information Revolution is already underway and it is a revolution in data and a revolution in software.  Software is eating the world and the market for legal services has already been impacted.  This is only the beginning.  We are at the very cusp of a data driven revolution that will usher in new fields such as Quantitative Legal Prediction (which I have discussed here).

Pressure on Big Law will continue.  Simply consider the extent to which large institutional clients are growing in their sophistication.  These clients are developing the data-streams necessary to effectively challenge their legal bills.  Whether this challenge is coming from corporate procurement departments, corporate law departments or with the aid of third parties — the times they are indeed a-changin’.

A variety of intermediary consulting firms and legal informatics companies have developed a robust business advising corporate clients how to find various arbitrage opportunities in the legal services market. One of the best examples is TyMetrix — who has recently leveraged more than $4 billion in legal spend data to help General Counsels and their corporate law departments drive down legal costs.  Indeed, The Real Rate Report has made a huge splash (if you do know what I am talking about – I suggest you learn – because it is a pretty big deal).

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Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity [Via McKinsey Global Institute]

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There is growing interest in “Big Data” – both within the academy and within the private sector. For example, consider several major review articles on the topic including “Big Data” from Nature, “The Data Deluge” from The Economist and “Dealing with Data” from Science.

Indeed, those interested should consult the proceedings/video from recent conferences such as Princeton CITP Big Data 2010, (where I presented on the Big Data and Law panel) GigaOM 2011 NYC, O’Reilly Strata 2011 Making Data Work Conference, etc.  Summarizing some of these insights and providing new insights is a new report for the McKinsey Global Institute entitled Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity. This report was the subject of a recent NY Times article New Ways to Exploit Raw Data May Bring Surge of Innovation, a Study Says. Here is one highlight from this article “McKinsey says the nation will also need 1.5 million more data-literate managers, whether retrained or hired. The report points to the need for a sweeping change in business to adapt a new way of managing and making decisions that relies more on data analysis. Managers, according to the McKinsey researchers, must grasp the principles of data analytics and be able to ask the right questions.”

Of course, here at Computational Legal Studies, we are interested in the potential of a Big Data revolution in both legal practice and in the scientific study of law and legal institutions.  Several recent articles on the subject argue that a major reordering is — well — already underway.  For example, Law’s Information Revolution (By Bruce H. Kobayashi & Larry Ribstein), The Practice of Law in the Era of ‘Big Data’ (By Nolan M. Goldberg and Micah W. Miller) and Computer Programming and the Law: A New Research Agenda (By Paul Ohm) highlight different elements of the broader question.

We hope to share additional thoughts on this topic in the months to come. In the meantime, I would highlight the slides from my recent presentation at the NELIC Conference at Berkeley Law.  My brief talk was entitled Quantitative Legal Prediction and it is a preview of some of my thoughts on the changing market for legal services.  Please stay tuned.

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Applying the Science of Similarity to Computer Forensics (with lots of other potential applications) [via Jesse Kornblum]

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From the talk description: “Computers are fantastic at finding identical pieces of data, but terrible at finding similar data. Part of the problem is first defining the term similar in any given context. The relationships between similar pictures are different than the relationships between similar pieces of malware. This talk will explore the different kinds of similar, a scientific approach to finding similar things, and how these apply to computer forensics. Fuzzy hashing was just the beginning! Topics will include wavelet decomposition, control flow graphs, cosine similarity, and lots of other fun mathy stuffs which will make your life easier.”

I have been quite interested in the “science of similarity” and its application to a variety of questions in law and the social sciences.  Whether it concerns the sort of analogical reasoning described by legal scholars such as Edward Levi or Cass Sunstein or cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman (1973)), developments in “science of similarity” are of great relevance to theorists in a wide variety of sub-fields.

While there has been lots of skepticism regarding the application of these principles (particularly by those in legal theory),  from our perspective it appears as though computer science ∩ psychology/cognitive science stands on the cusp of a new age in the “science of similarity.” I offer the slides above as I found them to be both interesting and useful. Stay tuned for more …