Once upon a time, Rick Merrill was a real estate litigator in Los Angeles at Greenberg Traurig. And when it came to preparing for a case, he had a few issues.

“I was always frustrated by the difficulty of finding real meaningful, actionable data about the state trial court judges that we were in front of,” Merrill explained. “Greenberg did what every other big firm does,” i.e., send an email around to the office to see who knows what. “That always struck me as limited, because at best you would get anecdotal data about people's experiences.”

He was tired of the email question threads and the unhelpful Google searches, so he did what an increasing number of Big Law attorneys are doing—in 2015, he created his own legal technology company to do something about it.

The result is Gavelytics, a judicial analytics tool that examines key data points about judicial behavior, such as how each judge tends to rule on over 100 types of motions, how quickly judges move through their cases and how frequently lawyers file peremptory challenges against specific judges. Gavelytics is keeping it local—the company announced today that it has launched coverage of Los Angeles County Superior Court, and it plans to keep its analytics California judge-centric.

Here's a rundown of what you need to know about the product:

What It Is: Gavelytics is a web-based platform where law firms can search through tailored data sets and visualizations to find analytics on individual judges, or to compare a series of judges. The data is automatically ingested into Gavelytics' database, where it is sorted and cleaned by a combination of human reviewers and machine learning technology.

The key here is efficiency, Merill noted. He explained that “for all the product does, it's almost as important what it doesn't do.” Some products, he explained, “are so convoluted and can do so many things that they become hard to use and are cluttered.” As a result, Gavelytics looks to display only analytics that Merill and his team of former litigators believe are most important to the intended audience of litigators.

Who It's For: That intended audience of litigators is no joke—while firms as a whole can certainly use the tool for intelligence and other purposes, Merrill describes the product as “by litigators, for litigators.” Often, it's litigators who are making the final call regarding specific case strategies, and they can use Gavelytics for useful information, such as how judges behave in motion practice, how fast they operate, and if they rule more or less often for plaintiffs and defendants.

“It occurred to me that if we knew in advance that this was a judge who doesn't grant summary judgment, or this is a judge that often rules against real estate developers, we really could have used them to benefit our clients,” he explained.

As of now, the product is restricted to California cases and judges, with a specific focus on L.A. County. While Merrill said he's not opposed to expanding the product outside of California, Gavelytics sees enough of an audience with 42,000 law firms in the state and virtually the entire Am Law 100 having an office there. As he noted, “There's enough here for us to chew on for some time.”

How It Can Be Used: Merrill sees three main use cases for the Gavelytics system. The first is the process of pitching for new clients, where attorneys can use numbers to back up their assertions. “You can not only point out your strengths as a law firm, but you could say, listen, with this particular judge, we've found that this particular judge is hostile to discovery motions, and we think this case lends itself to discovery practice, so we should do the following,” he explained.

The second is a California-centric concern: California Code of Civil Procedure 170.6, colloquially known as papering the judge. At the early phase of litigation, any party can ding the judge, forcing a new judge onto the case. Using Gavelytics, he said, one can make more informed decision to use that mechanism.

The third is high-level case strategy, such as summary judgment and pleading.

How Much It Costs: Gavelytics is a subscription-based product, and Merrill did not go into specifics with Legaltech News concerning pricing, saying, “We have a price and product mix that works for big firms all the way down to small firms.” The company's website contains a link to contact a company sales representative concerning customer pricing.

How It's Different: The judicial analytics market is certainly growing at a rapid pace, as everyone from start-ups like Ravel Law (recently acquired by LexisNexis) to larger companies such as Bloomberg Law have started to make their claim on the arena. Notably, many of these companies function by scraping data off of PACER, the ubiquitous electronic public access service of United States federal court documents, then improving them through various visualization and connection tools.

You won't find this federal court data on Gavelytics. Instead, the company is keeping its visualizations local, where no PACER analog exists. Merrill said acquiring and cleaning this data was the hardest part of getting the platform up and running, but now says it has tens of millions of case records dating back almost three decades.

Encouraging Adoption: Merrill says that some of the data in the system flies in the face of what litigators currently think they know. Gavelytics isn't aiming to replace lawyers' intuition, though, but rather augment it, as case-specific reasoning means that the data should not be followed 100 percent of the time.

Still, Merrill says, the data can be an important tool for the simple fact that litigators can't be in all places at all times. “The average judge in L.A. County has something like 3,000 cases a year. Even if you're before that judge with something like 2-3 cases a year—which by the way would be a huge number before any single judge in L.A. County—you're still only seeing a tiny percentage of the judge's actual behavior. You're dealing with a small sample size.”

Once upon a time, Rick Merrill was a real estate litigator in Los Angeles at Greenberg Traurig. And when it came to preparing for a case, he had a few issues.

“I was always frustrated by the difficulty of finding real meaningful, actionable data about the state trial court judges that we were in front of,” Merrill explained. “Greenberg did what every other big firm does,” i.e., send an email around to the office to see who knows what. “That always struck me as limited, because at best you would get anecdotal data about people's experiences.”

He was tired of the email question threads and the unhelpful Google searches, so he did what an increasing number of Big Law attorneys are doing—in 2015, he created his own legal technology company to do something about it.

The result is Gavelytics, a judicial analytics tool that examines key data points about judicial behavior, such as how each judge tends to rule on over 100 types of motions, how quickly judges move through their cases and how frequently lawyers file peremptory challenges against specific judges. Gavelytics is keeping it local—the company announced today that it has launched coverage of Los Angeles County Superior Court, and it plans to keep its analytics California judge-centric.

Here's a rundown of what you need to know about the product:

What It Is: Gavelytics is a web-based platform where law firms can search through tailored data sets and visualizations to find analytics on individual judges, or to compare a series of judges. The data is automatically ingested into Gavelytics' database, where it is sorted and cleaned by a combination of human reviewers and machine learning technology.

The key here is efficiency, Merill noted. He explained that “for all the product does, it's almost as important what it doesn't do.” Some products, he explained, “are so convoluted and can do so many things that they become hard to use and are cluttered.” As a result, Gavelytics looks to display only analytics that Merill and his team of former litigators believe are most important to the intended audience of litigators.

Who It's For: That intended audience of litigators is no joke—while firms as a whole can certainly use the tool for intelligence and other purposes, Merrill describes the product as “by litigators, for litigators.” Often, it's litigators who are making the final call regarding specific case strategies, and they can use Gavelytics for useful information, such as how judges behave in motion practice, how fast they operate, and if they rule more or less often for plaintiffs and defendants.

“It occurred to me that if we knew in advance that this was a judge who doesn't grant summary judgment, or this is a judge that often rules against real estate developers, we really could have used them to benefit our clients,” he explained.

As of now, the product is restricted to California cases and judges, with a specific focus on L.A. County. While Merrill said he's not opposed to expanding the product outside of California, Gavelytics sees enough of an audience with 42,000 law firms in the state and virtually the entire Am Law 100 having an office there. As he noted, “There's enough here for us to chew on for some time.”

How It Can Be Used: Merrill sees three main use cases for the Gavelytics system. The first is the process of pitching for new clients, where attorneys can use numbers to back up their assertions. “You can not only point out your strengths as a law firm, but you could say, listen, with this particular judge, we've found that this particular judge is hostile to discovery motions, and we think this case lends itself to discovery practice, so we should do the following,” he explained.

The second is a California-centric concern: California Code of Civil Procedure 170.6, colloquially known as papering the judge. At the early phase of litigation, any party can ding the judge, forcing a new judge onto the case. Using Gavelytics, he said, one can make more informed decision to use that mechanism.

The third is high-level case strategy, such as summary judgment and pleading.

How Much It Costs: Gavelytics is a subscription-based product, and Merrill did not go into specifics with Legaltech News concerning pricing, saying, “We have a price and product mix that works for big firms all the way down to small firms.” The company's website contains a link to contact a company sales representative concerning customer pricing.

How It's Different: The judicial analytics market is certainly growing at a rapid pace, as everyone from start-ups like Ravel Law (recently acquired by LexisNexis) to larger companies such as Bloomberg Law have started to make their claim on the arena. Notably, many of these companies function by scraping data off of PACER, the ubiquitous electronic public access service of United States federal court documents, then improving them through various visualization and connection tools.

You won't find this federal court data on Gavelytics. Instead, the company is keeping its visualizations local, where no PACER analog exists. Merrill said acquiring and cleaning this data was the hardest part of getting the platform up and running, but now says it has tens of millions of case records dating back almost three decades.

Encouraging Adoption: Merrill says that some of the data in the system flies in the face of what litigators currently think they know. Gavelytics isn't aiming to replace lawyers' intuition, though, but rather augment it, as case-specific reasoning means that the data should not be followed 100 percent of the time.

Still, Merrill says, the data can be an important tool for the simple fact that litigators can't be in all places at all times. “The average judge in L.A. County has something like 3,000 cases a year. Even if you're before that judge with something like 2-3 cases a year—which by the way would be a huge number before any single judge in L.A. County—you're still only seeing a tiny percentage of the judge's actual behavior. You're dealing with a small sample size.”