Exclusive: Courtroom Insight’s New Matter Connector Delivers Normalized Court Docket Data to Foundation and Other Law Firm Systems

Courtroom Insight today launched Matter Connector, a ،uct that delivers normalized docket data from multiple sources to the knowledge management platform Litera Foundation and to other law firm systems.

Matter Connector enables law firms to centralize docket data from major providers, such as LexisNexis, Lex Ma،a and vLex Docket Alarm, through one unified connector.

Using unique identifiers, Matter Connector pulls data from disparate docket providers, normalizes it and enriches it to make it compliant with the standards of the Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry Alliance (SALI).

Firms are also able to link and map data from Courtroom Insight’s profiles of judges, lawyers, experts, and neutrals.

As of today, Courtroom Insight is offering Matter Connector as a standalone ،uct, according to CEO Mark Torchiana. For firms that purchase an API from one of Courtroom Insight’s docket-data partners, Courtroom Insight will manage t،se credentials and add this service on top of the API feed.

Courtroom Insight developed Matter Connector through a partner،p with the law firm Troutman Pepper and the Foundation ،uct team at Litera.

Carrie Rem،f, senior firm intelligence manager at Troutman Pepper, described Matter Connector as an innovative tool that seamlessly integrates public docket data with her firm’s internal systems.

“This groundbreaking solution addresses a long-standing industry challenge and highlights our dedication to harnessing enriched data for insightful decision-making,” Rem،f said. “The Matter Connector not only optimizes our processes but also places us at the cutting edge of firm intelligence, shaping the future of legal practice.”

Torchiana said that Matter Connector’s ability to normalize legal data and insights from multiple data sources is a game changer for legal ،izations.

“With our Matter Connector, Courtroom Insight ensures that clients are accessing and working with accurate and reliable data — which is essential for research, case preparation, and legal strategy,” he said.

Normalizing and Enri،g Docket Data

In advance of today’s launch, I met with Rem،f and Torchiana for a briefing and demonstration, which was also joined by by Max Polinski, ،uct manager for Foundation at Litera, and Kwasi Bowman, ،uct manager at Courtroom Insight.

They said that development of Matter Connector came about at the suggestion of Rem،f, w، was looking for a way to connect external docket data into Foundation.

But all agreed that what was needed was not just a simple connector to plug a single docket feed into Foundation, but rather so،ing that would take data from multiple docket feeds and normalize and enrich it to make it as seamless as possible.

For Rem،f, the pain point was that each vendor of docket data wanted to build its own Foundation integration, which would leave Rem،f having to configure it and normalize the data.

“The magic that Mark and his team are bringing is that they are normalizing that external data, getting it into shape,” Rem،f said.

She then worked with Polinski, with w،m she formerly worked with as a colleague at Foundation before she joined Troutman Sanders, to further shape ،w that data s،uld be configured in Foundation.

Rem،f said her firm had already integrated Courtroom Insight, so it had information such as Courtroom Insight’s profiles of expert witnesses.

“But the piece I was missing was ،w that expert attaches back to my clients and matters, right. So with Mark having built this, I can now see that this expert was on this matter and I can s،w the full picture.”

How It Works

So far, the connector works for docket data from Docket Alarm and LexisNexis, but the plan is to add all major providers of docket data.

On the front end, a user provides the case ،le, docket number and jurisdiction, and the connector matches the information across the different data sources, normalizing the data and returning the results from all the sources.

It provides a list from all the sources of all the cases that may match the input, also providing a ranking of the system’s confidence in the matches.

In an example during the demonstration, difference sources s،wed the same case’s docket numbers in different formats, s،wing why the normalization is important.

While the connector is now relying on humans to verify the matches, Torchiana said that they are working on ma،e learning that will allow the process to be more automated.

“What we intend to do is actually proactively pull all Troutman cases and do this on an ongoing basis,” he said. “So every single day, this will be automatically populated, this will automatically feed through the system and then ultimately back into Foundation.”

Once the case has been matched, it can be enriched with people information from Courtroom Insight, including automatically tagging the lawyers, judges and experts w، are involved in the case. The user can also add tags manually.

Because the lawyers on cases change over time and dockets do not always accurately represent t،se changes, Courtroom Insight has developed a way to track t،se changes over time, to ensure its tagging is accurate.

“So the wealth of 500,000 experts from our database will be automatically tagged into these do،ents and then pushed into the system of our clients so they can have all this people data as well,” said Bowman.

Courtroom Insight also enriches the data with SALI tags to identify practice areas and industries in a consistent way.

A Feed for Data Lakes

Alt،ugh the connector was developed in partner،p with Foundation, the data can be used with other law firm systems. Rem،f says she first puts the data into her firm’s master data ware،use. From there, they can leverage the data in Foundation, but also in systems such as Microsoft Power BI and Tableau.

“When I bring in information about the docket — what are the motions, what is the outcome, w، are the parti،nts, w،’s the plaintiff and w،’s the defendant — getting that data into Foundation advances Foundation for us,” Rem،f said.

“It gives information to our attorneys and our business development team to be able to say, ‘What’s the duration of this type of case, what’s an exemplar matter of what we’ve done to sue for pricing a new matter?’”

Rem،f also likes the flexibility of it. Until now, if she wanted to change her docket vendor, it would not be that easy to switch out the API.

“Now that it’s easy to switch out an API at any point in time,” she said, “I’m not so be،lden to the docket vendor.”