Do Big Data and advances in statistical inference threaten to replace trial lawyers? No. That’s because rhetoric, the essence of the trial lawyer’s craft, always will define the starting point of any inquiry into cause and effect.
The lawyer of the future would be “the man of statistics,” predicted Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his classic law review essay, “The Path of the Law.” More than a century later, after many missteps, false starts, appalling injustices and fierce controversies, the future undeniably has arrived.
