AI could soon predict how your judge will rule

Several products have promised in recent years to predict how a judge might rule in a case or on a potential motion. Those products have had mixed success. But that's about to change, an annual trial lawyers' convention was told on Thursday.

"AI will help you predict how a judge will rule within a couple of years," said Marshall Cole, managing partner at Nemecek & Cole.

Cole spoke to a standing room only first session of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles' annual convention. The session was called "AI & Litigation Technology." The event draws roughly 3,500 attorneys and judges to Las Vegas every Labor Day.

Another speaker on the panel, Robert T. Simon of The Simon Law Group, told the crowd "AI can create a medical timeline that used to take hours, and now takes only seconds."

He was talking about tracking medical appointments and various doctors, which is needed in the litigation discovery process.

Products including Lex Machina and Ravel Law, both developed at Stanford, and Gavelytics, developed by lawyers in Los Angeles, have offered computer assisted case predictability models for several years. Like all artificial intelligence, those products depend on access to large amounts of data, which has not been readily available from many trial courts.

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