Computational Indicators in the Legal Profession : Can Artificial Intelligence Measure Lawyers' Performance?

The assessment of the legal professionals’ performance is increasingly important in the market of legal services to provide relevant information both to consumers and to law firms regarding the quality of legal services. In this article, we explore how computational indicators are produced to assess lawyers’ performance in courtroom litigation, analyzing the specific types of information they can generate. We capitalize on artificial intelligence (AI) methods to analyze a sample of 8,045 cases from the French Courts of Appeal, explore different associations involving lawyers, courts, and cases, and assess the strengths and flaws of the resulting metrics to evaluate the performance of legal professionals. The methods we use include natural language processing, machine learning, graph mining and advanced visualization. Based on the examination of the resulting analytics, we uncover both the advantages and challenges of assessing performance in the legal profession through AI methods. We argue that computational indicators need to address deficiencies regarding their methodology and diffusion to users to become effective means of information in the market of legal services. We conclude proposing adjustments to computational indicators and existing regulatory tools to achieve this purpose, seeking to pave the way for further research on this topic