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You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Extract from article by David Curle
Legal is the ultimate HiPPO [Highest Paid Person’s Opinion] industry — it’s based on an expertise model. At a recent conference on quantitative methods in law, Daniel Martin Katz, director of The Law Lab at Chicago Kent College of Law, called this a “cult of one person’s thinking” in the way lawyers assess risks. In a business in which the main players are constantly trying to price, predict and prevent risks, that cult seems out of step with the way more quantitatively-organized industries address such decision-making.Evidence-driven decision-making, by contrast, is characterized by situations where those doing the deciding only go where the data takes them. McAfee cited a wide-ranging metastudy of research findings where the accuracy of decisions based on experts’ judgments could be compared with decisions based on algorithms or other “mechanical” means within the field of human health and behavior. In the 136 research studies examined, only 6% of them resulted in experts outperforming machines in making judgments. Machines performed better in 46% of the studies, and the rest were toss-ups.