A partnership announced today between judge-analytics company Gavelytics and remote court appearance company CourtCall will allow lawyers who are scheduled to appear before a judge via CourtCall to obtain analytics on the judge from Gavelytics that will provide insights about the judge’s patterns and propensities in decision-making.

The partnership will also help drive Gavelytics’ expansion from California, the only state it currently covers, into additional states, starting with Florida in December followed by Illinois and Texas early next year.

I’ve written about Gavelytics in several posts here and recently interviewed its founder and CEO Rick Merrill for my LawNext podcast. The company, launched last year, uses analytics and artificial intelligence to analyze docket data and provide lawyers with a variety of insights about judges’ propensities, workloads and leanings.

CourtCall, founded in 1995, provides a platform that allows attorneys to make remote appearances in routine matters in civil, family, criminal, probate, bankruptcy, workers’ compensation and other courts. It has relationships with a number of courts, agencies and ADR panels throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Under this partnership, when an attorney schedules a hearing through CourtCall, the attorney will be given the option of purchasing a Gavelytics’ report on the judge for $199. Those who purchase the report will then be able to access the Gavelytics platform to see analytics on the judge. Access is limited to the specific judge and these users will not be able to access the full array of judicial research and analytics available to enterprise subscribers.

These reports will be available to attorneys outside California only to the extent Gavelytics covers the jurisdiction. It will begin to cover some Florida counties in December and the rest of the state early in 2019. It will also expand its coverage into Texas and Illinois early in 2019. The company plans eventually to cover most U.S. jurisdictions.

Merrill said that he is excited about this partnership because it helps make Gavelytics more affordably available to smaller firm lawyers, whereas most of the company’s enterprise subscribers are larger firms.

“The whole thing we’re after is to provide analytics to everybody,” he said. “This tool is so powerful that we want lawyers of every size to be able to have access. The goal is to get this in everyone’s hands and make it ubiquitous.”

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.