The Law and Big Data
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To illustrate Big Data’s potentially pervasive effects, examples can be drawn from many legal perspectives, including civil litigants and banking regulators. For example, there are several ways in which law can be “personalized” using Big Data. The personalized law business model would involve synthesizing large amounts of data regarding the course and resolution of all manner of legal issues. Sophisticated predictive analytic software would be used to analyze data and compare it to the facts of a client’s case. The results would be used to provide the universe of options others have taken in similar situations and to forecast the probability that a particular course of action would be favorable to the client.43 Private technology such as software apps could also provide simple directives for legal consumers to comply with the law without having to weigh the reasonableness of their actions or search for the content of specific laws.44 Moreover, “personalized law” could extend beyond the legal system and into personalized dispute resolution more generally. Individuals could, based on data, consider the efficacy of options outside of the traditional legal system, such as alternative dispute resolution.
41 See generally Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Evidence Based Law, 96 CORNELL L. REV. 901 (2010).
42 See Cass Sunstein, Choosing Not to Choose, 64 DUKE L.J. 1, 4–5 (2014).
43 Law firms have already employed predictive software in settlement negotiations and e-discovery. See, e.g., Don Philbin, Improve Negotiation Outcomes with Analytics, AMERICAN BAR ASSOC., July 30, 2015; See also McGinnis & Pearce, supra note 4, at 3041 (predicting that “[c]omputational services are on the cusp of substituting for other legal tasks—from the generation of legal documents to predicting outcomes in litigation”).
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