Wednesday 20 January 2016

Data and Fastcase

The LLSDC's newsletter, Lights, has a fascinating interview with Ed Walters, the CEO of Fastcase. Since the Barco Law Library is in the process of subscribing to Fastcase, the article is especially relevant.
Walters explains that Fastcase is really built on data, he says, "Even in 1999 when we got started, we did things like integrate citation analysis into search results, so Big Data is baked into our company’s DNA. We were ahead of our time then, but it seems like the legal market is really catching on to the idea of legal analytics." He goes on to say that "Right now, law is trying to collect data. It’s early times. In the next stage, our profession will deploy the data that we’ve collected and structure it to understand the past. Then, in the third stage, we can use history and predictive analytics to predict the future, at least probabilistically." (Shades of Isaac Asimov!).
The interview is well worth reading and kudos to law librarian and editor Amy Taylor, of American University's law school, for conducting the interview.

1 comment:

Ross Foote said...

Probalistically, fastcase will lead the way. Louisiana user since inception.