Lawyer Selection X Artificial Intelligence

Judge-shopping is a legal tactic that has been used by attorneys for a very long time. It essentially consists of manipulating and delaying a case so as to select/avoid judges which are expected to be favorable/unfavorable to one’s cause. Some say it’s a perfectly legitimate strategy, while others call it sneaky and underhanded.

But here’s the thing about judge-shopping: it places the entire focus and responsibility on the presiding judge rather than the acting attorney. The truth is that who your lawyer is may have as much, if not even more, importance as who your judge is. Lawyer selection, however, is still mainly based on recommendations, online reviews and plain ol’ word of mouth. No program had ever been designed to actually quantify a lawyer’s “stats”, for lack of a better term. Until now.

And this is where Premonition could really change the game. It’s essentially an artificial intelligence system that gathers court data to find out which lawyers usually win before which judges. And here’s the kicker: so far, they’ve found no correlation between price and performance! Now obviously Premonition isn’t perfect, and its Chief Innovation Officer, Toby Unwin, has even cautioned that it should be used as the start of a selection process, not as its be-all and end-all. Personally, I think that any program which brings transparency to the legal practice should be welcomed with open arms. Let’s just hope we see something like this in Quebec in the near future!