Using Legal Intelligence to Turn Data Into Justice
Every day, legal violations go undetected. Not because there is no evidence or indication of wrongdoing, but because the information is buried in scattered, unstructured data across the internet. From user reviews on eCommerce sites to public databases, the digital trail is fragmented and difficult to piece together. Without the right knowledge and tools, violations are only discovered much later.
Often, only when a plaintiff seeks legal counsel, or not at all.
Darrow’s mission is to equip attorneys with the power of legal intelligence: the ability to detect, assess, and address every actionable legal violation so no harm ever goes unnoticed, and no injustice goes unchallenged.
What is Legal Intelligence?
Legal intelligence, sometimes used as an all-encompassing buzzword to describe anything from legal productivity tools to practice management software, is actually something quite different. True legal intelligence involves analyzing vast, complex data sources and pinpointing signals indicating legal harm.
The word intelligence, in any context, refers to the practice of identifying threats, detecting wrongdoing, and surfacing digital footprints indicating wrongdoing.
In the legal world, it's no different. Using a combination of AI, web intelligence, analytics, and human expertise, legal intelligence allows us to detect signals that point to legal harm before it fully materializes. This represents one of the most persistent gaps in the legal system: the lack of early-stage tools to surface and assess risk before potential harm becomes actual damage.
How Darrow Uses Legal Intelligence to Detect Violations
With multiple applications, Darrow’s Legal Intelligence Platform identifies patterns of harm, connects fragmented data points, and surfaces high-value, high-merit cases for legal teams. This intelligence enables us to do what once seemed unthinkable: perform an attorney’s initial investigatory work at a massive scale.
We use proprietary data mining technology and advanced anomaly detection algorithms to create legal intelligence assets that analyze millions of publicly available data points across multiple sources. Leveraging AI, web intelligence, and large language models, we normalize, tag, cluster, and extract critical information, uncovering patterns of harm amongst fragmented data and turn it into structured, actionable insights across diverse practice areas, including:
- Antitrust & Unfair Competition
- Privacy & Data Breach
- Environmental Justice
- Consumer Fraud
- Labor & Employment Law
- ERISA Litigation
- Securities & Financial Fraud
- Insurance Claims
- Medical Liability
Our team of attorneys and analysts then reviews and connects the evidence to determine if a legal violation has occurred.
If we detect a violation, our Legal Intelligence team consolidates the evidence and drafts a detailed case memo that clearly presents all detailed claims, factual basis, jurisdiction, damages model, class size, and supporting evidence. We partner with plaintiffs attorneys to build strong cases and support them throughout the entire litigation process by offering professional legal consulting and plaintiff services.
The Five Stages of the Legal Intelligence Process
Darrow's approach to detecting legal violations follows a systematic, five-stage process that combines our proprietary legal intelligence assets with specialized legal expertise:
1. Asset Development & Deployment
We begin by developing and deploying legal intelligence assets tailored to specific case types. This involves:
- Identifying categories of legal violations that are both likely to support viable claims and can be effectively detected through public data using our legal intelligence tools.
- Building specialized Agentic AI tools to detect these specific violations
- Deploying these assets to continuously monitor relevant data sources
For example, to uncover medical product liability violations, we developed a dedicated asset specifically designed to detect pharmaceutical product liability cases by analyzing patterns across adverse event reports, consumer reviews, and clinical study results.
We've also built an asset to detect ERISA violations, which scans detailed retirement plan data across multiple sources for patterns such as excessive fees, underperforming funds, and discrepancies in plan administration. This enables attorneys to quickly uncover potential fiduciary breaches that might otherwise remain hidden in dense disclosures and performance metrics.
2. Data Collection
Just as human intelligence experts collect information to detect wrongdoing, our assets:
- Gather information from diverse public and proprietary data sources
- Extract relevant elements while filtering out noise and irrelevant data
- Securely transfer valuable intelligence to our analytical systems
This stage mirrors the classic intelligence gathering process but operates at digital scale. Where a human intelligence agent might observe executive meetings or photocopy sensitive documents, we process millions of consumer complaints, regulatory filings, or product specifications to extract meaningful patterns.
3. Pattern Analysis & Signal Detection
In traditional intelligence, analysts look for meaningful patterns across reports from multiple assets. Similarly, our process includes:
- Cross-correlating information from multiple data sources
- Applying specialized algorithms to detect anomalies and patterns
- Distinguishing meaningful signals from background noise
The power of this approach comes from its ability to detect patterns that would be invisible when looking at any single source in isolation. Just as connecting reports from multiple human assets might reveal a coordinated campaign, our technology can connect seemingly unrelated data points to reveal systematic legal violations.
4. Intelligence Assessment & Validation
In national security, raw intelligence must be assessed for reliability and significance before action is taken. Similarly, our process includes:
- Validating detected patterns against legal standards and precedents
- Assessing the strength and admissibility of potential evidence
- Evaluating causation and damages to determine case viability
In this stage, our legal intelligence analysts transform the consolidated data into actionable legal knowledge. Where intelligence agencies might produce threat assessments or strategic analyses, we produce comprehensive legal assessments that establish whether detected patterns constitute valid claims under applicable law.
5. Operational Planning
The final stage in traditional intelligence is operational planning based on gathered intelligence. In our legal context, this involves:
- Developing comprehensive case strategies based on detected violations
- Assembling complete evidentiary packages with supporting documentation
- Prioritizing cases based on legal merit, impact, and actionability
Our Legal Intelligence analysts compile the allegations, factual background, applicable jurisdiction, damages analysis, potential class size, and supporting evidence.
Case Underwriting and Plaintiff Connection
Once we've completed the legal intelligence process and identified a legal violation, Darrow supports legal teams by underwriting the case and connecting them with qualified plaintiffs, allowing attorneys to move from case detection to active litigation with clear, data-backed support.
Using methodologies developed by Darrow’s legal, data, and product teams, our underwriting process delivers objective assessments based on available data rather than subjective judgment. Each evaluation includes:
- Estimated class size and damages
- Probability of success
- Expected settlement values and resolution timelines
- Comparable cases and relevant benchmarks
Once we've partnered with an attorney to move forward with litigation, Darrow connects them with qualified representative plaintiffs by defining plaintiff criteria, managing intake from first contact to retention, and providing only vetted, aligned candidates. All activity is coordinated through PlaintiffLink, a dedicated area in the Darrow Portal where firms can track progress and communicate with the team.
The Importance of Human Oversight
Just as in national security or law enforcement, humans remain essential to the legal intelligence process. Technology can uncover patterns of harm at scale, but human judgment is essential to determine whether those patterns hold legal significance.
Our team of legal intelligence analysts plays a critical role in this process by carefully reviewing every output, applying legal expertise to evaluate the facts, determining whether the evidence supports a viable claim, and evaluating damages. Their work ensures that each case aligns with legal standards, meets thresholds for merit, and represents real harm that can be challenged in court.
Human oversight ensures that legal intelligence remains grounded in real-world context. The combination of technology and expert analysis is what allows us to turn raw data into meaningful outcomes for those affected by injustice.
Turning Legal Intelligence Into Legal Action
Legal Intelligence offers attorneys a strategic advantage, allowing them to identify actionable cases earlier, with greater confidence, and at a scale that was never before possible. With Darrow, legal teams gain access to a sophisticated suite of technologies that surface violations before they escalate, backed by evidence, and enriched with data.
Partner with Darrow to uncover high-impact cases, build strong claims, and deliver justice with confidence. Contact us.
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