Data Science: The numbers game Law almost lost.

On the face of it, Analytics and Law are manifestly divergent fields of practice. One need only consider the nature of Algorithms that require numerical attributes for their calculations and the textual rigidity of substantive law to realize this. The very first obstacle one will encounter in applying Analytics to Law is the absence of calculable numerical variables in raw legal data. No judicial precedent, statute or common law principle has ever been reduced to a mathematically sound numerical expression; raw legal data is simply not Analytics-receptive. There are however some methods of mining raw legal data, like powerful Text Analytics that make it possible to build reasonably accurate classification, sentiment analysis and many other models.