April 9, 2020. The doors to 60 Centre Street have been boarded shut while non essential court proceedings have been shut down due to COVID-19.

From Feb. 24 to March 1, only three federal court complaints mentioned COVID-19. But by the week of May 24 through May 31, as more states relaxed their lockdown requirements, that number jumped to 148. Sound interesting? One company is betting it's more than than just a number.

Today, Lex Machina's Legal Analytics platform launched its web browser-based COVID-19 Impact Analyzer App, a weekly updated program that highlights coronavirus-related filings and outcomes in U.S. federal courts.

To be sure, Legal Analytics is no stranger to in-depth analytics regarding federal court rulings and decisions. It's even beginning to extend its analytics to state courts. But the COVID app is unique in specifically examining the coronavirus' impact on the federal courts beginning the week of Feb. 24.

Lex Machina director of product management Carla Rydholm said the app was developed because they were fielding many questions regarding COVID-19, including if court proceedings were slowing down and what type of cases were being filed.

What It Is: Each Monday, the app is set to release a week's worth of data concerning federal court filings and findings, Rydholm explained.

Users click a week, such as May 18-24, and a chart is shown that includes total case filings in federal courts, except prisoner rights and Social Security matters, according to a demo shown to Legaltech News. Total case filings are also compared with previous years. Likewise, users can also contrast the amount of filings in a specific practice area to filings made in previous years.

For further insights, COVID app users can view how many trials, judgment rulings were made during any week post-shutdown, and view new complaints that mention COVID-19. All of the described elements are available to the public and current Legal Analytics customers for free, Rydholm said.

However, access to the "underlying cases," such as the court documents, aren't available in the public version. Instead, paid access to Lex Machina, which is owned by LexisNexis, is required to access court documents.

Lex Machina decided to release a publicly available version to allow anyone interested to review how the pandemic is impacting federal courts, Rydholm explained. 

Rydholm noted the app can be helpful to any practitioner that wants to keep up with what's happening, with real data. She added that it's also a valuable tool for lawyers counseling their clients about trends in the court system. 

Competition: The COVID-19 app joins a growing pool of court research tools, including Casetext, ROSS and even other LexisNexis products such as judge-analytics platform Context and Lexis Analytics. 

However, while lawyers can check court analytics sites daily or schedule alert notifications regarding filings, Rydholm views the COVID-19 app as unique in that it's a weekly update and provides a snapshot of COVID-19 activities. "The idea with the app is it's easy, it's efficient and you can check in with those snapshots," she said.

A Long Shelf Life: To be sure, some legal tech observers have questioned the viability of some coronavirus-centric legal tech. But Lex Machina foresees a lengthy need for analytics concerning COVID-19-related litigation as it winds through the U.S. judicial system.

"We're expecting the app to evolve. Some of the litigation being filed now that have a keyword matching COVID-19 will play out in the courts for a while," Rydholm said.

While it may take some time for certain practice areas to be impacted by coronavirus shutdowns, lawyers' and the public's interest won't dissipate anytime soon, Rydholm added.

"Major issues occur like a hurricane or a big oil spill, but we've never seen something major happen at the scale of COVID-19," she explained. "There's interest to see how that affects societies and plays out in the courts."