Legal research gets a big data boost

LexisNexis has chosen MarkLogic technology to power its next-generation legal research solution, Lexis Advance, because of its agility in helping make decisions on big data in real time.

Jerry Barton, VP of global product development with LexisNexis, says, “When we started building the next generation of our product, we were at a crossroads at whether we should build our own solution or use a commercial product. There aren’t many options when you’re looking for a commercial solution that can help store, search, analyze and transform more than a billion documents. MarkLogic is a cutting-edge technology that enables the LexisNexis development team to spend more resources building products and features, and less time and money maintaining a technology platform. This focus on the applications is driving our customer satisfaction and is a critical component of our continued growth.”

MarkLogic says LexisNexis selected its technology because it enables the company to be in the forefront of the following trends:

• Big data—LexisNexis has billions of documents with complex connections to one another. MarkLogic enables it to call up content in milliseconds and make changes in real time. 
• Advanced search capabilities—LexisNexis’ search system relies on MarkLogic to execute 30 or more targeted searches simultaneously and to deliver precise results to users in less than a second.
• Analytics—LexisNexis developed intuitive and interactive interfaces to analyze rich datasets and spot trends in case law. MarkLogic enables those applications by combining multiple, previously separate datasets into a single operational database.