Evaluating Your Options for Legal Intelligence Implementation

When our corporate law department decided to implement predictive capabilities for matter management and e-discovery, we faced the classic build-versus-buy dilemma. Twelve months and three vendor evaluations later, I've learned that the decision framework matters more than the specific choice. Here's a practical comparison based on actual implementation experience across different approaches.

The market for Predictive Legal Analytics has matured significantly in the past three years. You're no longer choosing between a handful of experimental startups—you're choosing between mature commercial platforms, open-source frameworks, and custom development paths, each with legitimate use cases depending on your organization's priorities.

Approach 1: Commercial Legal Analytics Platforms

Representative vendors: Lex Machina, Premonition, LexisNexis Litigation Profile Analytics, Bloomberg Law Analytics

How They Work

These platforms aggregate public…