Certificate in Legal Analytics & Innovation

Legal scholars, lawyers, data scientists and tech entrepreneurs are using machine learning, natural language processing, programming and high-performance computing to analyze legal documents in completely new ways. The demand for these skills is high. Students who are familiar with the tools of legal analytics can better prepare themselves for a lasting legal career with this certificate. The field of legal analytics uses computing power to analyze text from legal documents, treating words more like numerical data. Computer algorithms, combined with the knowledge of data scientists and lawyers, can provide insights about what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. We are living in a time of revolutionary change in the way that the law is studied and practiced.

The Legal Analytics Certificate is a methods certificate, designed to provide additional training for currently enrolled J.D. students to bring their research and reasoning skills to bear in an array of areas. For example, a student could use the Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative Certificate as a way to enhance their environmental law practice. This certificate promotes maximum flexibility in choosing between the 1.5, 2, and 3-credit options offered in the J.D. program and in the M.S.D.A. program.

Students pursuing a certificate in Legal Analytics have the opportunity to participate in a number of research, experiential learning and extracurricular activities.

• Research: The Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative also works with external partners in the legal community to put legal analytics advances into practice, develop new learning opportunities and share cutting-edge research insights.
• Hands-on Learning: Students can take part in workshops and training sessions hosted at the College of Law or Robinson College of Business. There are also opportunities to work with clients, serve as a graduate research assistant and pursue summer internship placements at firms that are using this technology.
• Legal Analytics Lab: In the Legal Analytics Lab at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business Institute for Insight, faculty, students and corporate partners use the tools of big data analytics to produce original research.

• Students learn to identify patterns, using big data analytics, including text mining, machine learning, image analysis and other methodologies to produce research. They unlock insights from thousands of pages of text, using computational techniques.
• They work with faculty, law firms and companies to help organizations examine predictive results from volumes of documents and other data.
• Quantify type and frequency of case outcomes to predict future outcomes.
• Students examine analytics tools to leverage emerging technologies in law practices as informed consumers and competent technology partners.