Robert Ambrogi Blog
Last June, the seven-year-old litigation analytics company Gavelytics shut down, seemingly overnight, with founder and CEO Rick Merrill announcing the news by an email on June 29 that he “recently made the difficult decision to close Gavelytics effective June 30,” as I reported at the time.
Now, Gavelytics is rising from the ashes, in a sense, with the announcement that a relative newcomer to the legal analytics space, Pre/Dicta, has acquired the Gavelytics platform.
Pre/Dicta, which launched within just a few days of Gavelytics’ closure, claims to predict how a judge will rule on a motion to dismiss in federal with an accuracy rate of 86.7%.
As I wrote when it launched:
“What distinguishes Pre/Dicta from other litigation analytics products is that its algorithms consider not just docket data, but also a range of available biographical and financial data on federal judges – such as net worth, education, work experience, political affiliation, and more – to uncover hidden patterns in their decision-making.”
This acquisition of Gavelytics, the company says, will dramatically shorten its timeline for offering the same sorts of predictions for matters in state courts.
Merrill, a former biglaw litigator who started Gavelytics after becoming frustrated with his inability to get meaningful information about the judges before whom he was appearing, is joining Pre/Dicta as its strategic advisor.
“Pre/Dicta created what I always dreamed of for Gavelytics: a litigation analytics platform that was forward-looking rather than backward-looking, that could make predictions and not just provide generic descriptive statistics,” Merrill said in a statement.
Pre/Dicta cofounder and CEO Dan Rabinowitz said that he believe the deal is a major milestone both for Pre/Dicta and the entire field of predictive litigation analytics.
“With the acquisition of Gavelytics’ state court assets, Pre/Dicta is suddenly in reach of building the litigator’s holy grail: a product that generates predictions for every lawsuit nationwide,” he said. “We’re honored to inherit the legacy of Gavelytics, which performed groundbreaking work in judicial analytics, and still more honored that Rick Merrill will continue that work at Pre/Dicta.”
Rabinowitz is a lawyer who practiced as an associate in Sidley LLP’s Supreme Court & Appellate and Mass Tort Litigation groups. Later, he served as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice; general counsel to a Washington, D.C. data science company; and associate general counsel, chief privacy officer, and director of fraud analytics for WellPoint Military Care.
For a more detailed description of Pre/Dicta’s technology and how it works, see my earlier post: New Judicial Analytics Product Predicts Motion Outcomes with Claimed 86.7% Accuracy.