System for determining and displaying legal-practice trends and identifying corporate legal needs

1. An information retrieval system comprising:

a database of multilingual legal documents, including a plurality of court docket documents and case law documents written in two or more languages, wherein the court docket and case law documents are logically associated with means for identifying the court docket and case law documents by lawyers, law firms, corporate entities, legal-subject classifications, and industry classifications;

a data extraction module coupled to the database of multilingual legal documents configured and operative to define relationships amongst the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents, the data extraction module being further configured to provide at least first and second indexes wherein each first and second index defines different relationships amongst the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents prior to a user requested trend report request; and

a server configured to communicate with the database and with a client access device, the server further configured to receive a trend report request with respect to at least one of a lawyer and a law firm from the client access device and to generate a trend report by semantically associating a lawyer or law firm with legal-subject classifications and industry classifications based on the request, with the trend report request including means for identifying a time period, at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, and at least one of a legal-subject classification and an industry classification, the server including a search module coupled to the database of legal documents configured and operative to enabling textual searching of the legal documents to identify lawyers and law firms matching a user defined parameter based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents wherein at least one of the lawyers or law firms are sorted by relevance when more than one lawyer or law firm is identified, the server further configured to define a graphical user interface to present information related to a plurality of social networks to which the identified lawyers belong based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents, wherein the plurality of social networks comprise peer litigator network, professional associations network, professional seminar network, law school network, local peer network, legal author network, peer client network and judge network.

2. The system of claim 1 :

wherein the time period defines a number of years;

wherein the server is configured to determine a number of court docket documents and a number of case law documents that match the one of the legal-subject classification and the industry classification during each year of the time period criteria; and

wherein the graphical user interface is further defined to present an interactive graph with respect to at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, the plurality of social networks and a corporate entity based on the number of matching case law documents or the number of matching court docket documents for each of the years.

3. The system of claim 2 , further comprising a subscriber database associated with the server, wherein the graphical user interface defined by the server includes a control feature selectable to cause storage of the time period, and the one of the legal subject classification and the industry classification in association with a user identifier for subsequent reuse.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of court docket documents consist of:

one or more federal court dockets; and

one or more state court dockets.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys with experience on a defined legal issue.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys having experience with a particular judge or court.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the search module is configured to enable a user to find legal representation through contextual relationships on related web pages.

8. A method of operating an information retrieval system, the method comprising:

providing means for searching a database of multilingual legal documents having a plurality of court docket documents and case law documents written in two or more languages by lawyer, law firm, judge, court, corporate entity, legal-subject classification, and industry classification;

providing means for defining at least first and second indexes wherein each first and second index defines different relationships amongst the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents prior to a user requested trend report request;

providing means for enabling textual searching of the plurality of court docket documents and case law documents to identify lawyers and law firms matching a user defined parameter based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents wherein at least one of the lawyers or law firms are sorted by relevance when more than one lawyer or law firm is identified;

receiving a trend report request including means for identifying a time period, means for identifying at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, and a corporate entity, and means for identifying at least one of a legal-subject classification, an industry classification, a particular judge and a particular courtroom;

identifying one or more of the court docket documents and case law documents based on the means for identifying the time period, the means for identifying at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, and a corporate entity, and the means for identifying at least one of the legal-subject classification, an industry classification, a particular judge and a particular courtroom;

generating a trend report by semantically associating a lawyer or law firm with legal-subject classifications and industry classifications based on the trend report request; and

defining a graphical user interface to present information related to a plurality of social networks to which the lawyer belong based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents, wherein the plurality of social networks comprise peer litigator network, professional associations network, professional seminar network, law school network, local peer network, legal author network, peer client network and judge network.

9. The method of claim 8 :

wherein the time period defines a number of years; and

wherein the method further comprises:

determining a number of court docket documents and a number of case law documents that match the one of the legal-subject classification, the industry classification, the particular judge and the particular courtroom during each year of the time period; and

further defining the graphical user interface to present an interactive graph for at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, the plurality of social networks and a corporate entity based on the number of matching case law documents or the number of matching court docket documents or each of the years.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein further defining the graphical user interface includes defining a control feature selectable to cause storage of the time period, and the one of the legal-subject classification and the industry classification in association with a user identifier for subsequent reuse.

11. The method of claim 8 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys with experience on a defined legal issue.

12. The method of claim 8 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys having experience with a particular judge or court.

13. The method of claim 8 , wherein the means for enabling textual searching is configured to enable a user to find legal representation through contextual relationships on related web pages.

14. A method of operating an information retrieval system, the method comprising:

providing a database of multilingual legal documents, including a plurality of court docket documents and case law documents written in two or more languages;

providing a data extraction module coupled to the database of multilingual legal documents configured and operative to define relationships amongst the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents, the data extraction module being further configured to provide at least first and second indexes wherein each first and second index defines different relationships amongst the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents prior to a user requested trend report request;

receiving, at a server, a trend report request including means for identifying a time period, means for identifying at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, and a corporate entity and means for identifying at least one of a legal-subject classification and an industry classification;

identifying legal documents in the database based on the means for identifying the time period, the means for identifying at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, and a corporate entity, and the means for identifying at least one of the legal-subject classification and an industry classification;

wherein the server is configured to enable textual searching of the legal documents to identify lawyers and law firms matching a user defined parameter based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents in the database of legal documents, wherein at least one of the lawyers or law firms are sorted by relevance when more than one lawyer or law firm is identified, the server further configured to define a graphical user interface to present information related to a plurality of social networks to which the identified lawyers belong based upon the defined relationships of the multilingual documents, wherein the plurality of social networks comprise peer litigator network, professional associations network, professional seminar network, law school network, local peer network, legal author network, peer client network and judge network; and

generating a trend report by semantically associating a lawyer or law firm with legal-subject classifications and industry classifications based on the trend report request.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein identifying legal documents based on the means for identifying the time period and the means for identifying at least one of the legal subject classification and an industry classification includes searching the database of legal documents based on means for identifying the court docket and case law documents by lawyer, law firm, and corporate entity.

16. The method of claim 14 : wherein the time period defines a number of years; and

wherein the method further comprises:

determining a number of court docket documents and a number of case law documents that match the one of the legal-subject classification and the industry classification during each year of the time period; and

further defining the graphical user interface to present an interactive graph with respect to at least one of a lawyer, a law firm, the plurality of social networks and a corporate entity based on the number of matching case law documents or the number of matching court docket documents for each of the years.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein further defining the graphical user interface includes defining a control feature selectable to cause storage of the time period, and the one of the legal-subject classification and the industry classification in association with a user identifier for subsequent reuse.

18. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys with experience on a defined legal issue.

19. The method of claim 14 , wherein the user defined parameter includes law firms or attorneys having experience with a particular judge or court.

20. The method of claim 14 , wherein the search module is configured to enable a user to find legal representation through contextual relationships on related web pages.