Three months after France passed a law banning the use of public court data for the statistical analysis and prediction of judges' decisions, France's National Bar Council is demanding passage of a similar law that would apply to lawyers.

The Conseil National des Barreaux (CNB), France's national bar association, adopted a resolution last month that reads in part: "It being specified that the identity data of judges and members of the court cannot be reused with the purpose or effect of assessing, analysing, comparing or predicting their actual or perceived professional practices, [we] demand that identical treatment be reserved for identity data of lawyers in the context of the dissemination of court decisions in open data."

The law barring use of data analytics to analyse and predict judges' actions, which passed in March and carries a penalty of up to five years in prison if violated, does not bar the use of data to assess and predict lawyers' actions. But according to The Artificial Lawyer, the CNB is now lobbying the government and French Ministry of Justice for an equivalent law that would apply to lawyers. 

The CNB does influence regulations governing lawyers in France but it does not have the power to change a law or regulation governing the use of public data. It is not clear whether it will hold enough sway to get such a law approved by politicians and high-level government officials.

The CNB's resolution, dated June 15, also says lawyers need to be guaranteed the same access to the flow of court decisions that is provided to judges, and that treating them identically in terms of protecting their personal identifying data in released decisions is "the only way to guarantee the equality of arms under the European Human Rights Convention".

"Equality of arms" is the legal term used to describe procedural equality between parties, and is considered a core part of the right to a fair trial under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Some in France's legal community have criticized the law passed in March, as the country has made a concerted push for more transparency in the courts and more open government. But France was an early proponent of the right to be forgotten and is a country known for guarding its citizens' privacy.

So far, France is the only country with a law barring the use of digital analytics to reveal patterns in judges' court decisions. And no other country is known to be considering such a law, let alone one that would criminalise the use of data analytics to assess and predict patterns in lawyers' actions. 

In fact, data analytics is a burgeoning field and is frequently used by lawyers and law firms – especially in high-stakes litigation. Companies such as Lex Machina, now owned by LexisNexis, have been mining litigation data culled from various sources for years, gaining insights about judges, lawyers, parties and the subjects of the cases themselves.  

Other companies that have big legal data analytics businesses include Ravel Law, which is also now owned by LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Premonition and Gavelytics.

If the CNB succeeds in getting the government to ban the use of analytics on lawyers, legaltech companies could, in theory, still analyse the rate of success of certain legal arguments and claims. But they would not be able to do so with the names of the lawyers or judges involved.

No one at the CNB could immediately be reached for comment.