Key Role Data Science is Playing in the Legal Sector

With organizations applying data-driven decision-making across functions and verticals, the legal sector is no longer immune to it. Data science will help improve legal processes and practice. This can range from preparing litigation and identifying legal trends, to supporting clients as legal practitioners.

The legal sector generates much data from the courtroom, evidence, witnesses, and judgment. You can increase efficiency in your legal practice through data science. Like any other use of data science for business, the legal sector too can take advantage of it.

Role of data science in the legal industry

Analysis of past cases and outcome prediction

Most law firms and legal practitioners generally handle different cases simultaneously. You can use algorithms and check patterns in past cases through the use of your data science knowledge. When you get insightful patterns, you can get a better view of what the outcome of a case could look like.

You can identify criminal cases with the likelihood of success in prosecution using machine learning models. Criminal cases come with witness statements, several witnesses, and other information. In addition, legal analytics can predict the outcome of cases using historical court judgments.

Let’s say you’re at a law firm and deal with personal injury cases yearly. You can use data science to predict with precision whether a personal injury case is worth undertaking. A clear case prediction saves time.

Data science helps you to give your prospective clients realistic expectations about the outcome of their cases. You can gauge the outcome based on past cases using ML models. Data science also makes it easy to estimate the cost of a lawsuit for your clients. Analyzing all that information is possible through machine learning and artificial intelligence.

2. Case researching

You had to dig into piles of files to research a case as a traditional layer. However, today, AI and ML allow you to access massive data on relevant cases and their outcomes. Data science involves machine learning and goes beyond your internal data to provide information from the legal field.

For example, online legal resources like Practice Law and LexisNexis use advanced search algorithms to help lawyers discover relevant case-related materials. In addition, LexMachina provides AI tools to aid lawyers in knowing a case approach for a specific legal issue.

You will improve the case handling efficiency if you research cases with ease. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are making case research easier and faster. Remember, improved efficiency increases your output.

If you are new to data science, you can enroll in a course or study data science online. Getting the basics of data science like machine learning, data modeling, visualization, and data analysis is good for your legal practice.

3. Lawyer bots or AI chatbots for legal help

You can offer legal helps to your clients through bots. Besides, many people can access your legal services through bots. The legal practice involves some repetitive tasks. You can automate those tasks through a lawyer bot.

Maybe, you are wondering what lawyer bots are. Well, a lawyer bot is a software with the capacity to perform automated tasks, which is the work of lawyers. In addition, bots improve the speed of work, which increases efficiency.

Your clients don’t have to visit your physical office to get services. Instead, you can use bots to allow them to get self-service online. In addition, the artificial intelligence chatbox predicts case outcome and prepare documents faster through automation.

4. Contract reviewing

Contract reviewing for clients is among the roles of lawyers or law firms. However, mediation, negotiation, and settling a contract isn’t an easy task. Lawyers from two sides need to meet, inspect, refine and repetitively swap contract documents, making the process tedious.

Mistakes may also occur during contract settlement. However, ML and AI technology can review documents and contracts to determine errors and risks and suggest changes for better terms. A law firm using machine learning software to review contacts is faster and more effective.

For example, Clearlaw, Klarity, and Lawgeex create AI systems that absorb a proposed contract and examine it using natural language processing technology (NLP). The AI system decides the aspect of the contract which is agreeable and the one that doesn’t pose an issue. However, you need the basic data science course to use AI for contract review.

5. Automating image and text redaction

Redaction is removing an image or text from a legal document. During the redaction process, you black out certain phrases, words, or whole paragraphs of text or pixelate images. After redaction, you will require much attention and support to review and scrutinize your final document.

You can make errors when redacting. However, you can do a perfect redaction using AI-based redaction software. A pattern-based automated redaction tool is faster and easy to use in redacting videos, audio, and PDF files.

Law firms can cut costs when using AI-redaction software. But, remember, a manual redaction is time-consuming and expensive. So make sure you learn some basics about AI- redaction before applying it in your law firm. HeroVired will offer you a data science certification course like artificial intelligence, which empowers you to perform perfect redaction of images and texts.

Implications of using data science in legal practice

Improved productivity

Much of the legal work is monotonous and cumbersome. You will be more productive by automating tedious, repetitive daily tasks. Artificial intelligence enhances the efficiency and accuracy of legal procedures through the automation of menial tasks.

Many people may come to your office seeking legal services. You will use a lot of time to hand them in. However, using AI chatbots, your clients can access your help and self-service online, saving you time for other legal matters.

But to be more productive, you need legal analytical skills. Therefore, undertaking a data science course will give you the data analytic knowledge required to get insights from huge legal data. In addition, you can learn about data science online, where experts offer courses and certificates after completion.

Increased profitability

Your legal firm will be more profitable if you implement data science in your practice. You can automate billing and perform other repetitive tasks using AI, which increases efficiency and profits. In addition, AI-redaction software works faster and saves you costs compared to manual redaction.

AI and ML perform contact reviewing within a short time and with accuracy. Therefore, you can eliminate costly errors from the contract.

Faster client acquisition

Many clients come online to look for legal services. You can track and acquire those online visitors by combining machine learning and marketing data. In addition, you create targeted campaigns when you use data science to understand the behavior of your potential clients.

Elimination of research errors

legal research is essential in law practices. you may overlook important data or make errors. However, AI-powered software eliminates research errors and gives desired results faster.

For example, machine learning algorithms find documents and data faster, relevant to a specific case. In addition, ML algorithms can highlight changing laws over time, saving time during collection by law firms.

The case for using data science in legal space

Judge analysis

Judges are expected to exercise impartiality. However, the law is about interpretation, which can differ from one judge to another. Data science allows you to analyze legal documents and discover hidden patterns regarding judgments.

Predictive analytic techniques can help identify relevant arguments and phrases that aid certain judgments. Judge analysis strengthens legal systems since law firms can demand consistent rulings on related cases.

If you’re a law practitioner, you can undertake a data science certification course to acquire relevant data analytic skills required for judge analysis.

AI in criminal investigation

Technology is playing a greater role in promoting criminal investigations. However, lawyers have to deal with too much data like witness statements, witnesses, and the examination of evidence. Analyzing all that data within the limited time frame is hard.

However, AI software can speed up investigative proceedings. Using artificial intelligence software, you can examine the available evidence and look for specific patterns and links in a case. The natural language processing (NLP) tool and supervised ML will help to analyze and reach a faster decision.

The birth and growth of the legal tech space

Legal tech refers to technology that supports and improves legal service delivery. The rise of legal tech has influenced how the justice system works, increasing its efficiency.

We can trace the birth of legal tech from the 1940s. During that time, the need arose to use technology in the legal industry, leading to the growth of jurimetrics science. 

Jurimetrics involves the use of scientific methods in the legal field. In the 1960s and 70s, the legal industry began applying modern logic uses in law and documentation systems. However, today, improved technology and the rise of data science are revolutionizing the legal sector.

The rise of startups has led to an overhaul of legal research. The launch of cloud computing and untethering law practice is also driving the legal tech space. 

As a result, and due to the demand for experts, many people are enrolling in data science studies. Data science has many areas for specialization. For example, you may focus on statistics for data science, AI, and machine learning.

Use cases and applications of data science in legal

The power of data science can be seen in many areas like machine learning, statics, data wrangling, and big data management. Here are more areas data science applications will be useful in the legal field.

• Classification and categorization of legal documents
• Predictive modeling for legal cases
• Pattern recognition in evidence examination
• Anomaly detection
• Fraud and risk detection

The importance of data science in the legal sector cannot be understated. Law firms deal with too much data that requires better analysis and storage. With the right data, it’s easy to predict the outcome of cases. 

On the other hand, a lack of insights from data leads to a costly decision. That’s why law firms should employ data science experts.

Integrating data science into legal practice improves profitability, optimizes time management, and eliminates errors in case research. Chatbots are also becoming most useful in offering clients legal services online.

However, incorporating data science into legal practice requires the right knowledge and skills. Hero Vired offers the Integrated Program in Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, that integrates with the MITx MicroMasters Program.

Through this data science course, you will engage in live sessions with faculty from the industry and work on projects with real-world data. The comprehensive course enables you to learn the core concepts of data science including:

• Machine learning essentials
• Foundational statistics
• Deep learning, computer vision, and  NLP
• Python programming