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Lex Machina Brings Unprecedented Coverage to Legal Analytics


— August 3, 2020

Including nearly 2.8 million civil cases in Federal District Court, Lex Machina is offering its largest and most comprehensive data set.


Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company, announced its expanded federal district court coverage, which gives users access to all commercially relevant federal civil cases in one place. Users can now find a federal district court case and use it as a jumping off point to discover key analytics including information about judges, law firms, attorneys, or parties.

“With the addition of nearly 800,000 cases, Lex Machina is taking a major step forward in our mission to bring Legal Analytics to all areas of the law,” said person “this is the most cases we’ve ever added to our system at one time, giving users new capabilities and insights into the entire court system.”

Lex Machina began focusing on patent litigation and expanded to 16 different practice areas. Each expansion added more cases to the database, and Lex Machina already includes two million cases in federal district court within these practice areas. Today’s addition of nearly 800,000 unlocks insights into a wider set of analytics that are relevant to any practitioner.

Lex Machina’s systems, including its Attorney Data Engine and Motion Metrics, run over all cases in the Lex Machina platform so users can immediately gain new insights with the expanded coverage. Enhanced capabilities include:

  • Search for any case and view its up-to-date activity
  • Keyword search across comprehensive coverage — all dockets and downloaded documents
  • View motion grant/denial rates for a judge’s full docket
  • Analyze the complete list of cases for any judge, law firm, attorney or party
    • Find out how busy a court is and with what types of matters
    • Compare timing between courts or judges
    • See the complete client list for a law firm
    • Review a party’s civil federal court history since 2009

“Based on user feedback, we added functionality to find any case and get insights based on the full array of civil cases in federal court, while maintaining our commitment to high-value practice-area specific data that is most relevant to a particular matter,” said Wade Malone, Co-Head of Product at Lex Machina.

In reviewing the new comprehensive federal civil court data, Lex Machina discovered some exciting insights. For example, Judge Mary Catharine Rodgers of the Northern District of Florida saw the most cases overall with over 183,000 cases pending since 2009. Judge Rodgers is currently presiding over a large multidistrict litigation (MDL) master case involving alleged product liability defects in earplugs used by the military. When controlling for cases associated under an MDL (a filtering capability Lex Machina designed), Judge James Rodney Gilstrap of the Eastern District of Texas saw the most cases with 8,265 cases.

The Department of Justice appeared as counsel more often than any other law firm in the system, both on behalf of plaintiffs (53,117 cases) and on behalf of defendants (104,451 cases). The next most active law firms were The Maritime Asbestosis Legal Clinic with 30,137 cases representing plaintiffs and Shook, Hardy & Bacon with 62,085 cases representing defendants. The top plaintiff was Malibu Media, LLC which filed a large number of copyright suits, although it has not filed any cases in 2020. The top defendant was 3M due to the previously mentioned earplug product liability litigation.

Practitioners can gain access to the expanded dataset with Lex Machina’s new Enterprise Package, a comprehensive option with increased coverage and new functionality. Benefits of the Enterprise Package include:

  • Support any number of Lex Machina users in the organization
  • Get access to unlimited functionality for all federal and state modules with no roadblocks or paywalls
  • Access to new venues and case sets as soon as they are available

This expanded coverage allows users to look both broadly at trends encompassing the full civil court docket and at practice-area specific insights.

Lex Machina logo courtesy of Lex Machina.
Lex Machina logo courtesy of Lex Machina.

About Lex Machina

Now celebrating the 10th anniversary of Legal Analytics, the Lex Machina platform fundamentally changes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. The company provides strategic insights on judges, lawyers, law firms, parties, and other critical information across 16 federal practice areas and select state courts. Lex Machina allows law firms and companies to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business.

Legal Analytics was named “Best Decision Management Solution” (AI Breakthrough Awards, 2019) and “Disruptor of the Year” (Changing Lawyer Awards, 2019). Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading global provider of legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics. For more information, please visit ​www.lexmachina.com​.

About LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of legal, regulatory and business information and analytics that help customers increase productivity, improve decision-making and outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 10,600 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

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