Data-driven law firm rankings to reduce information asymmetry in legal disputes
Journal
Nature Computational Science
ISSN-Digital
2662-8457
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2025-10-31
Author(s)
Abstract
Selecting capable counsel can shape the outcome of litigation, yet evaluating law firm performance remains challenging. Widely used rankings prioritize prestige, size and revenue over empirical litigation outcomes, offering little practical guidance. Here, to address this gap, we build on the Bradley–Terry model and introduce a new ranking framework that treats each lawsuit as a competitive game between plaintiff and defendant law firms. Leveraging a newly constructed dataset of 60,540 US civil lawsuits involving 54,541 law firms, our findings show that existing reputation-based rankings correlate poorly with actual litigation success, while our outcome-based ranking substantially improves predictive accuracy. These findings establish a foundation for more transparent, data-driven assessments of legal performance.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
5
Number
11
Start page
1010
End page
1016
Subject(s)
Division(s)
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
s43588-025-00899-2.pdf
Type
Main Article
Size
2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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