Why Law Firm Rankings Are Useless

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #43

soufron wrote: post #32

Also, being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of the firm I am working in. And trying to rank lawyers? Why not. But what's the point. I wouldn't accept being ranked anyway.

> being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of the firm I am working in Are you speaking hypothetically, i.e., 'if I was a lawyer'? I'm not an attorney but for a variety of reasons I have relatively deep insight into the legal industry, and I think this statement is generally not true. As in any field, most business comes from referrals and networking, and much of that happens within a f…

Post by charlesdm » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #43

soufron wrote: post #32

Also, being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of the firm I am working in. And trying to rank lawyers? Why not. But what's the point. I wouldn't accept being ranked anyway.

> being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of the firm I am working in Are you speaking hypothetically, i.e., 'if I was a lawyer'? I'm not an attorney but for a variety of reasons I have relatively deep insight into the legal industry, and I think this statement is generally not true. As in any field, most business comes from referrals and networking, and much of that happens within a f…

Post by CPLX » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

selectron wrote: post #46

libertymcateer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it does, and yes, that is correct. Lawyers can drop clients with cases that they think are losers and refuse to take them to trial. And, very, very often, before or directly after closing arguments, if the writing is on the wall, a case settles. Additionally, what sorts of cases are we talking about? Insurance defense? Toxic torts? Data breach? The 'winnability' of these cases varies highly. There are many, many…

It is always easy to criticize a data-driven analysis by saying its assumptions could be wrong. In the real world, all analysis is based on assumptions, some of which you can always claim might not be correct. But you have to really present an argument as to why and by how much the assumption is likely to be wrong, you can't just state that the assumption might be wrong. The assumption that cases which don't settle a…

Post by skybrian » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:59 AM UTC

wikiwawa wrote: post #11

libertymcateer wrote: post #4

> By applying machine learning algorithms to data mined from court judgments... And, with that sentence, this post becomes bullshit. The overwhelming majority of disputes do not reach litigation. The overwhelming majority of litigation does not reach judgment. And then a gigantic proportion of those judgments are appealed, and a non-trivial percentage are overturned. Even at that, only on the order of a single digit-…

A large part of statistics is devoted to making valid inference from noisy samples, largely by making sensible assumptions. Even in your example, it is common practice to assess a surgeon on outcomes of surgery, even though a lot of a surgeon's work does not lead to surgery. We aren't claiming to assess the wide practice of law, just litigation. We do Litigation Analytics.

Post by rrr298 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

libertymcateer wrote: post #36

downandout wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not all cases go to trial, it is important to know what your chances would be at trial with that particular firm. This is the same metric that the other side will primarily look at when considering the terms of any settlement. Therefore, I disagree that this post "becomes bullshit" merely because it relies on trial outcomes.

> While not all cases go to trial, it is important to know what your chances would be at trial with that particular firm. Read above to my last reply. This is really a poor way to think about law firms. Is the firm a toxic tort firm? Is it an appellate advocacy firm? Is it maritime law? Is it an intellectual property dispute? A business dispute? Win percentages are totally meaningless without more information, includ…