How do people select the lawyers they work with? How do they choose between associates and partners? What influences their decisions when finding attorneys to represent them in court? Do attorney track records in court truly demonstrate their litigation-based abilities? These are some of the questions answered by a study done using big data by Premonition, a Florida-based artificial intelligence company targeting the legal industry. The group uses big data to analyze trends and outliers in litigation.

The group's report titled “Everything You Know About Lawyer Selection is Wrong: Big Data Analyzes Litigation – Moneyball for Law?” points out some of the elements that are at play in firm success rates, individual attorney win rates, and lawyer selection.

Toby Unwin, inventor of the Premonition system, writes: “Win rate. The only item that affects the likely outcome of a case is the attorney's prior win rate, preferably for that case type before that judge. Attorneys themselves don't know their own statistics, nor do the firms they work for. The only thing that gets tracked in law is hours and fees.”