SAN FRANCISCO – Sedgwick LLP recently launched the California Supreme Court Review, an online database providing access to more than 1,600 Supreme Court rulings from 2000 through 2015.
With offices in Austin, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Houston, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; New York, New York; Newark, New Jersey; Orange County, California; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Washington D.C.; London, England; and Bermuda, the law firm's business and litigation expertise provided it with the foundation to begin the Illinois Supreme Court Review, which launched approximately a year ago. All the while, Sedgwick was also hard at work collecting data for the California database, finishing up at the end of last year.
“We are, of course, a law firm, rather than a data or technology company, so the purpose of it is to serve as a foundation for our legal analysis and appellate representation of our clients,” Kirk Jenkins, partner of Sedgwick and editor of both reviews, told the Northern California Record.
Jenkins is also the chair of the law firm’s appellate task force, with more than 20 years in exclusively appellate practice and the lead of the appellate counsel for more than 200 appeals and petitions across the country in both state and federal courts. He said that the team was initially inspired for the idea from the data analytics revolution that is transforming the legal world.
“The advances in the size of computer database and more sophisticated statistical techniques are making it possible for lawyers to support the kind of opinions that they’ve been giving for years with hard data,” Jenkins said.
California was a natural target after Illinois as it has a lot of impact on public policy.
"The California Supreme Court Review is designed to harness considerable data for use in identifying trends and predicting outcomes. While there is no set formula for determining a particular outcome, we see this marriage of rigorous data analytics and other academic techniques as cutting edge," Jenkins said in a news detail on Sedgwick’s website.
Jenkins and other members and experts of Sedgwick have analyzed the information available on the site. Those who browse the blog will be able to better understand the work and opinion of the California Supreme Court from the past, while also staying up on recent news.
“It’s constantly updating as the Supreme Court’s work continues with each new decision as the weeks go by,” Jenkins said.
Sedgwick also has blogs for the Illinois Supreme Court Review, Appellate Strategist, Cybersecurity Today, Insurance Law, and Employment Law. Those looking for information on California’s civil and criminal docket, the justices' voting history and opinions, which justices often vote analogously on particular topics, and various probabilities involving the appellate court can now find it on Sedgwick’s California Supreme Court Review.