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Legal Research And AI: Looking Toward The Future
August 4, 2017
I read with interest the recent post by my fellow Above the Law columnist, Bob Ambrogi, on a study about the disparity of results found when using various legal research tools. Those findings caught my attention because I’d encountered that very phenomenon when conducting research for this article. As I tested the built-in AI features of Westlaw and LexisNexis, I noticed that identical queries entered into each platform typically led to very different sets of results. Of course,...
August 4, 2017
I read with interest the recent post by my fellow Above the Law columnist, Bob Ambrogi, on a study about the disparity of results found when using various legal research tools. Those findings caught my attention because I’d encountered that very phenomenon when conducting research for this article. As I tested the built-in AI features of Westlaw and LexisNexis, I noticed that identical queries entered into each platform typically led to very different sets of results. Of course,...
Tort Suits Decline
August 4, 2017
Joe Palazzolo has a piece in the WSJ (behind a paywall) about the declining number of tort suits. According to the National...
August 4, 2017
Joe Palazzolo has a piece in the WSJ (behind a paywall) about the declining number of tort suits. According to the National...
Book Reviews: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
August 3, 2017
The ability to work hard, is again, just part of the equation explaining outstanding achievements, there is more than enough...
August 3, 2017
The ability to work hard, is again, just part of the equation explaining outstanding achievements, there is more than enough...
Federal Arbitration Act Governs Property Insurance Appraisals
August 3, 2017
In a decision filed July 14, 2017, the US District Court for the Central District of California invoked the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in refusing to vacate an insurance appraisal award determining the value of insured tools stolen from their owner. The decision, James Dickey, Inc. v. Alterra Insurance Company, is reported at 2017 U. S. Dist. LEXIS 109811. There was a twist: The court used state law to find that federal law applied. The parties, insurer and insured, had been unable to agree...
August 3, 2017
In a decision filed July 14, 2017, the US District Court for the Central District of California invoked the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in refusing to vacate an insurance appraisal award determining the value of insured tools stolen from their owner. The decision, James Dickey, Inc. v. Alterra Insurance Company, is reported at 2017 U. S. Dist. LEXIS 109811. There was a twist: The court used state law to find that federal law applied. The parties, insurer and insured, had been unable to agree...
Lex Machina’s Q2 litigation update shows trends influenced by TC Heartland and Oil States
August 3, 2017
Interestingly, the Lex Machina update shows a significant decline in case filings in the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.) correlating strongly with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, a case which restricted the statute on proper venue for patent infringement cases. 293 patent cases were filed in E.D. Tex. during 2017’s second quarter. That accounts for 26 percent of all patent cases filed in district court. That percentage share of overall...
August 3, 2017
Interestingly, the Lex Machina update shows a significant decline in case filings in the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.) correlating strongly with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, a case which restricted the statute on proper venue for patent infringement cases. 293 patent cases were filed in E.D. Tex. during 2017’s second quarter. That accounts for 26 percent of all patent cases filed in district court. That percentage share of overall...
Severe Storms Dominate First Half of 2017, Cause $41B in Large Losses
August 2, 2017
A series of hailstorms and tornadoes in the U.S. dominated the natural catastrophe statistics in the first half of 2017, according to Munich RE. A total of six severe, large-scale thunderstorms were recorded, each causing billions of dollars of losses. Worldwide natural cat losses from January to June, however, were below average. Overall losses came to $41 billion. The corresponding figure for the first six months of 2016 was $111 billion; the average for the last ten years $102 billion. Insured...
August 2, 2017
A series of hailstorms and tornadoes in the U.S. dominated the natural catastrophe statistics in the first half of 2017, according to Munich RE. A total of six severe, large-scale thunderstorms were recorded, each causing billions of dollars of losses. Worldwide natural cat losses from January to June, however, were below average. Overall losses came to $41 billion. The corresponding figure for the first six months of 2016 was $111 billion; the average for the last ten years $102 billion. Insured...
No Evidence; No Inference
August 2, 2017
McCarty fell outside a restaurant kitchen; her subsequent lawsuit against the restaurant for premises liability failed for lack of evidence. The Fifth Circuit distinguished the Texas appellate authority she cited by observing: “The evidence in each of these cases provided context for how long the hazardous condition had existed, in the form of either a discrete and readily documented antecedent event (e.g., a rainfall) or an attribute of the hazard (e.g., a puddle’s size, from which the jury...
August 2, 2017
McCarty fell outside a restaurant kitchen; her subsequent lawsuit against the restaurant for premises liability failed for lack of evidence. The Fifth Circuit distinguished the Texas appellate authority she cited by observing: “The evidence in each of these cases provided context for how long the hazardous condition had existed, in the form of either a discrete and readily documented antecedent event (e.g., a rainfall) or an attribute of the hazard (e.g., a puddle’s size, from which the jury...
Court Refuses to Send Claims Against DirecTV to Arbitration
August 2, 2017
This recent case out of the Central District of California, Perez v. DirecTV Group Holdings, LLC, Case No. 8:16-cv-1440-JLS-DFMx, has some interesting allegations. The plaintiff claims that DirecTV contacted her, unsolicited, at her place of business and sold her a promotional deal there for satellite cable. After the plaintiff agreed to the deal, DirecTV installed the equipment that same day and then asked the plaintiff to sign an Equipment Lease Agreement (ELA). The ELA was entirely in English,...
August 2, 2017
This recent case out of the Central District of California, Perez v. DirecTV Group Holdings, LLC, Case No. 8:16-cv-1440-JLS-DFMx, has some interesting allegations. The plaintiff claims that DirecTV contacted her, unsolicited, at her place of business and sold her a promotional deal there for satellite cable. After the plaintiff agreed to the deal, DirecTV installed the equipment that same day and then asked the plaintiff to sign an Equipment Lease Agreement (ELA). The ELA was entirely in English,...
Turns Out Legal Research Services Vary Widely in Results
August 1, 2017
Call me naive, but I would have thought that entering the identical search query on, say, both Westlaw and Lexis Advance would return fairly similar results, at least among the cases ranked highest for relevance. After all, shouldn’t the cases that are most relevant to the query be largely the same, regardless of the research platform? Turns out, the results they deliver vary widely — not just between Westlaw and Lexis Advance, but among several legal research platforms. In fact, in a comparison...
August 1, 2017
Call me naive, but I would have thought that entering the identical search query on, say, both Westlaw and Lexis Advance would return fairly similar results, at least among the cases ranked highest for relevance. After all, shouldn’t the cases that are most relevant to the query be largely the same, regardless of the research platform? Turns out, the results they deliver vary widely — not just between Westlaw and Lexis Advance, but among several legal research platforms. In fact, in a comparison...
The Use and Reliability of Federal Nature of Suit Codes
August 1, 2017
When filing a civil case in a federal district court, attorneys must identify one, and only one, of ninety issue area nature of suit (NOS) codes that best describes their case. While this may seem like a trivial moment in litigation, the selection of this single descriptor has significant implications for court statistics, empirical research findings, and the allocation of resources to federal courts, including judgeships. Despite the import of NOS codes, there is little within the process of choosing...
August 1, 2017
When filing a civil case in a federal district court, attorneys must identify one, and only one, of ninety issue area nature of suit (NOS) codes that best describes their case. While this may seem like a trivial moment in litigation, the selection of this single descriptor has significant implications for court statistics, empirical research findings, and the allocation of resources to federal courts, including judgeships. Despite the import of NOS codes, there is little within the process of choosing...
