LexisNexis Announces Acquisition of Ravel Law – artificial intelligence and natural language processing capabilities drive deal

“LexisNexis continues to aggressively invest in, build and integrate innovative capabilities, such as those developed by Ravel Law, into our ever-expanding portfolio of Legal Analytics solutions.”

LexisNexis® Legal & Professional, part of information and analytics provider RELX Group, today announced its acquisition of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics and visualization platform that empowers users to contextualize and interpret vast amounts of information to uncover valuable insights. The acquisition will expand the LexisNexis Legal Analytics suite of products through full integration of Ravel Law’s judicial analytics, data visualization technology and unique case law PDF content from the Harvard Law Library into Lexis Litigation Profile Suite® and Lexis Advance®. The integration of these tools strengthens LexisNexis’ position as a leader in the legal analytics space.

Ravel Law’s machine-learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies mine published case opinions, providing a wealth of information that helps litigators quickly uncover new insights and build specific arguments for use in court.

“To be successful in today’s competitive legal environment, lawyers need to make faster, more informed decisions, based on data that is incorporated into their natural workflow,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, managing director of North American Research Solutions at LexisNexis. “That’s a big step forward for the legal information industry and precisely why LexisNexis continues to aggressively invest in, build and integrate innovative capabilities, such as those developed by Ravel Law, into our ever-expanding portfolio of Legal Analytics solutions.”

Ravel Law’s technology will enhance the current Legal Analytics suite of solutions offered by LexisNexis, including LexisNexis MedMal Navigator®, LexisNexis® Verdict & Settlement Analyzer, Intelligize and Lex Machina. After acquisition, Ravel Law’s analytics offerings will continue to expand and be fully integrated into Lexis Litigation Profile Suite, delivering new insights around judicial behavior that complement the product’s current expert witness intelligence. Additionally, Ravel Law’s leading case law data visualization tool will be integrated into Lexis Advance, expanding the platform’s current visualization offerings. Finally, Ravel Law’s access to the Harvard case law content and PDF images of original case opinions will enrich the already expansive case law collection available from LexisNexis. LexisNexis is committed to continuing Ravel Law’s open access to this historical collection, giving the American public, and anyone with an internet connection, access to this vital collection of legal information.

For litigators and corporate counsel, this expansive suite of analytics tools will provide unprecedented insight into judges, jurisdictions, motion practice and parties to cases. For example, Lex Machina provides Legal Analytics about the behavior of judges, law firms, lawyers and parties, enabling them to craft successful trial strategies, win cases and close business. Lexis Litigation Profile Suite, enhanced by Ravel Law technology, will complement this offering by providing insight into arguments that are likely to be persuasive to a judge. When combined with the behavior analysis from Lex Machina, litigators have the ability to build judge-specific arguments for use in court.

“LexisNexis is truly leading the development of the field of Legal Analytics—through our content, tools, and engineering expertise,” said Jeff Pfeifer, vice president of product management at LexisNexis. “With the acquisition of Ravel Law, we’re gaining more than technology and content—we’re also gaining exceptionally talented people. The Ravel Law team has a proven track record of innovation, and we’re excited to have them on board.”

“The Ravel Law team is excited to join LexisNexis for many reasons, chief among them is that we share a vision for the role of technology in the practice of law in which innovative, highly effective and easy to use tools help lawyers make data driven decisions,” said Daniel Lewis, CEO of Ravel Law. “We look forward to bringing our expertise and technology to that effort at LexisNexis.”

Ravel Law and its team will continue to be based in San Francisco. The acquisition is part of LexisNexis’ vision to support the data-driven lawyer of the future. By creating leading-edge research and analytics solutions, LexisNexis helps legal professionals harness the power of data to work more efficiently, offer more informed legal counsel and drive success for their clients and for their practice.

About LexisNexis® Legal & Professional
LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of content and technology solutions that enable professionals in legal, corporate, tax, government, academic and non-profit organizations to make informed decisions and achieve better business outcomes. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. Today, LexisNexis Legal & Professional harnesses leading-edge technology and world-class content to help professionals work in faster, easier and more effective ways. Through close collaboration with its customers, the company ensures organizations can leverage its solutions to reduce risk, improve productivity, increase profitability and grow their business. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 175 countries with 10,000 employees worldwide, is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries.

About RELX Group
RELX Group is a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs approximately 30,000 people, of whom almost half are in North America. RELX PLC is a London -listed holding company which owns 52.9% of RELX Group. RELX NV is an Amsterdam -listed holding company which owns 47.1% of RELX Group. The shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX and RENX. The total market capitalisation is approximately £33.4bn/€38.2bn/$43.1bn*.

*Note: Current market capitalization can be found at http://www.relx.com/InvestorCentre

About Ravel Law
Ravel Law is a legal research, visualization, and analytics platform. Ravel Law empowers lawyers to do data-driven research, with analytics and interfaces that help them sift through vast amounts of legal information to find what matters. Established by lawyers in 2012, Ravel Law spun out of interdisciplinary work between Stanford University’s law school, computer science department, and d.school. Ravel Law is based in San Francisco, and is funded by New Enterprise Associates, North Bridge Venture Partners, Ulu Ventures, Experiment Fund, and Work-Bench. Ravel Law’s Judge Analytics was the best new product of the year in 2016 by the American Association of Law Librarians (AALL). The company also won two Innovator Awards from The Recorder in 2014 and 2016.