Lex Machina Launches New Atlanta-Area State Court Modules

Lex Machina and LexisNexis recently released four state court modules in Georgia: Fulton County Superior Court, Fulton County State Court, DeKalb County Superior Court, and DeKalb County State Court. Consisting of more than 100,000 combined civil court cases and covering the city of Atlanta, the new modules give practitioners critical insights on judges, courts, law firms, individual attorneys, and parties in key venues in Atlanta.

These Georgia state courts were selected for the next module expansions because they represent important state court venues. Together, they cover state capital Atlanta, a major business center in which upwards of 5 million individuals conduct business. They are key courts for civil cases involving contracts, torts, property, and other civil matters. These modules leverage the benefits of Lex Machina’s machine learning and attorney review to extract crucial data-driven insights from millions of state court documents. Legal Analytics are now available for civil cases filed in any of these courts.

“Georgia has always been an important venue for state litigation,” said Karl Harris, CEO of Lex Machina. “The bulk of day-to-day litigation occurs in state courts. By providing Legal Analytics for key Atlanta-area courts, we are expanding the breadth of essential strategy information practitioners can use to make data-driven decisions. These modules are significant additions to our rapidly growing coverage of all jurisdictions, with the accuracy and detail that Lex Machina is known for.”

The Georgia modules incorporate notable features such as filters for trials, class actions, orders regarding summary judgment, and appointment of special masters. They also incorporate an extensive collection of case types and document tags, including document tags for orders regarding summary judgment, jury verdicts, and judgments. The inclusion of these unique parameters will make the resulting analytics even more valuable and actionable for legal professionals.

With our current set of Georgia state court modules, our research uncovered the following data trends for all of the cases filed in the four state courts between January 1, 2016 and June 1, 2021:

• Total amount of damages awarded at trial, including attorneys’ fees, was $122,318,303
• 399 cases resulted in a jury verdict ruling
• In 2020, 19,301 total cases were filed
• In DeKalb County State Court, the median time to trial (for 367 cases) was 581 days compared to Fulton County State Court, where the median time to trial (for 1,383 cases) was 497 days

As the only Legal Analytics platform that combines an exclusive natural language processing technology with attorney review to analyze state court documents, Lex Machina is providing a unique solution to a significant technical challenge. In the absence of a unified system for state courts, Lex Machina does the difficult work of understanding the individual docketing practice of each state court system, and creates accurate analytics that reflect the unique aspects of the individual courts. This exclusive process allows Lex Machina to provide comprehensive data-driven insights about judges, law firms, individual attorneys, and parties in state courts. Lex Machina ensures the state court data and analytics are up to date by maintaining technology that continuously captures and enhances raw data from the state courts.

State court expansion remains a top priority at Lex Machina. We are adding modules on a court-by-court basis, with an emphasis on strict data quality and integrity. That includes downloading millions of state court documents to ensure that practitioners have access to the most complete, comprehensive, and accurate analytics available. For example, for Fulton County State Court alone, Lex Machina has downloaded approximately 100,000 documents that serve as the content foundation for creating the highest caliber data for judges, law firms, attorneys and parties, and adding high-value case coding for cases that reach trial.

These state courts join the other state court modules already available on Lex Machina, comprising a current total of 22 state courts. The addition of the four Georgia modules adds over 100,000 civil court cases filed since January 2016 to Lex Machina’s state court database, bringing our total number of state court cases to over 2.7 million. We are proud of this key achievement in our state court journey.

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 160 countries with 10,400 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

About Lex Machina

Lex Machina 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 17 federal practice areas and a growing number of 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.

Lex Machina was named “2021 Legal Technology Trailblazer” (National Law Journal Trailblazer Awards, 2021), Winner of the “Media Excellence” Award for Analytics/Big Data (13th Annual Media Excellence Award, 2021), “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.