What do most lawyers do when faced with expensive, cumbersome methods for tracking cases and predicting case outcomes? They suffer grunt work, try to collect limited information, hedge, or rely on hunches when giving advice. But what if the lawyer were also a software developer? That lawyer-developer might do what Michael Sander did: design an easy-to-use system for collecting, aggregating, visualizing, and understanding those cases. (They might call that system Docket Alarm.) Michael’s vision for Docket Alarm is a tool that automates much of the complex work that litigators do today. It would be enough if Docket Alarm simply made beautiful visualizations of information from court filings in the past — but the service also uses data analysis to predict the likelihood of success and probable value of a case. Michael has quickly built a full-service analytics platform, including conflict checks, document delivery, competitive intelligence, and automated marketing.
