Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) is piloting a litigation analytics programme to assist the firm's lawyers' with understanding of judicial decisions and help them prepare for future cases.

The firm is entering a trial partnership with data and analytics platform Solomonic to provide its lawyers with data and analytics relating to present and former judges in the Commercial Court, and cases.

The platform provides a set of analytical tools to filter and evaluate the judicial data, which include: by type of case or application; by the relationships between outcomes and factors such as counsel team size, make-up and the type of evidence involved; attitudes towards styles of legal submissions, expert evidence and practitioner texts; and the different judges' track records on appeals.

The pilot will be led by HSF partners Alex Oddy and Donny Surtani, with the latter explaining: "You can look at the track record of a particular judge, or analyse track records of the entire Commercial Court bench. You can start looking at what the outcomes have been bench-wide to see an overall trend of data across all decisions, and then interrogate it further by looking at individual judges, particular kinds of cases, and decisions."

The pair highlighted one obvious use for the tool, which is to assist with the preparation of a case strategy. Oddy said: "You can quickly identify a pool of relevant decisions and analyse the factors that have influenced those decisions, which can help you to then present your case."

The platform will also provide a statistical backing for the lawyers' recommendations to a client, which Oddy said will provide an extra level of confidence in decision making.

He explained: "In the Commercial Court you find some of the highest value and most complex matters in the English court system. When you have to make the biggest calls, it's helpful to have an additional reference point to inform your decision. This is not going to be a product which tells clients what to do, and it's certainly not how we're using it, or how Solomonic envisages it being used. However, it will provide another valuable input to help the client take sophisticated decisions in a structured and analytical way."

HSF's alternative legal services, competition, disputes and employment, pensions and incentives teams in Belfast and London have been invited to test the platform, and the lawyers involved will provide regular feedback to Solomonic to help develop the platform and make it as effective as possible.

HSF's cybersecurity practice has recently developed an in-house tool to help clients tackle data breaches.