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'Moneyball' for Litigators

By Jim Michalowicz

Big data is ubiquitous these days, but still largely untapped in legal circles. Litigators can take a page out of a sports team's playbook and use the patterns and trends found in data to make more informed decisions about case staffing, spend management, case strategy and probable outcomes.

Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game describes how the Oakland Athletics and the team's general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt in the movie of the same name) relied on empirical data to assemble a competitive baseball team. Despite having one of the lowest payroll budgets in baseball, Beane was able to identify players who had success indicators such as on-base and slugging percentages, even though they were not necessarily the most desirable according to traditional standards. He used principles of “sabermetrics,” the empirical analysis of baseball statistics, to recruit a winning team.

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