Systems, methods, and interfaces for aggregating and providing information regarding legal professionals
AssigneeThomson Reuters Global Resources
InventorsKevin Ritchey, Charles Vanek
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present inventors devised systems, methods, interfaces, and software that can facilitate identification of law firms and/or legal professionals. One exemplary system receives queries from users regarding a legal topic and responds with a listing of attorneys or law firms that are associated with information ranking them based on their experience in handling matters related to the legal topic. The ranking information is based on links between attorneys and public legal documents, such as judicial opinions, court dockets, briefs, litigation documents, journal articles, patents, trademarks, and so forth that mention them by name.
Claims8
An information retrieval system comprising:
- a database containing information regarding a plurality of lawyers;
- and
- a server configured to receive a query regarding lawyers from at least one client access device and to output to the client access device a list of two or more lawyer names contained in the database, with each of the lawyer names associated with a rank based on legal experience of the named lawyer.
A method of operating an information retrieval system, comprising:
- receiving a query regarding a legal topic;
- and
- outputting data in response to the received query, the data including a list of two or more lawyer names contained in the database, with each of the lawyer names associated with a rank based on legal experience of the named lawyer.
An information retrieval system comprising:
- a first set of data sources including one of more of the following types of content:
- profiles of judges or attorneys, judicial opinions, and legal articles;
- a second set of the data sources including one or more of the following types of content:
- federal court dockets, mergers and acquisitions, and jury verdicts and settlements;
- a third set of data sources including one or more of the following content types:
- patents, trademarks, copyrights, Security and Exchange Commission filings;
- federal administrative decisions, AOC statistics (federal courts), NCSC statistics (state court), press releases, news reports, web site content, state dockets, state attorney general opinions, state administrative decisions, corporate filing and registration;
- federal and state court briefs, federal and state pleadings and motions, law reviews, bar journals, and continuing legal information;
- means for extracting attorney identification data, court and court date information, attorney plaintiff-defendant status information, client identification data, client industry identification data, client plaintiff-defendant status information, attorney-to-client identification data, and law firm identification data from the first, second, and third sets of data sources;
- and
- means for associating one or more portions of the extracted data with entries in a professional directory or with one or more other portions of the extracted data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.