The existence of collections agencies is an accepted fact of modern capitalism, but given the nature of their business, it doesn’t take a legal expert to guess that these companies would be among the most frequent visitors to America’s courtrooms. But now, thanks to the work of Premonition, a Miami-based artificial intelligence company, for the first time the public has access to real statistics about how financial services companies fare in their legal proceedings.

Unsurprisingly, collections agencies and loan companies dominate the top 20.

The top litigant over the past two years was CACH LLC, a shell corporation owned by Denver’s Square Two Financial that specializes in filing collections lawsuits. Because many of CACH’s suits are based upon pursuing delinquent debts purchased in bulk from their original creditors, Premonition’s statistics reveal the “shotgun” approach the agency favors in the courtroom: their winning percentage is a middling 60%, thanks to statutes of limitations and other impediments to collecting stale debt, but the sheer number of cases they bring still ensures profitability.

Compared with established legal databases like LexisNexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg, Premonition claims their data is exponentially more detailed. “Around 97% of US litigation is at the Circuit and County level and has been virtually ignored by data providers,” Premonition’s website claims. In the case of companies like CACH, who tend to file in these lower courts, Premonition provides perhaps the first comprehensive overview of how collections agencies behave in the legal system.

Moreover, Premonition’s AI has the potential to revolutionize how companies select representation. The company claims its data gives clients “x-ray vision into the courtroom.” Clients are able to apply a variety of parameters (including win percentage, size of settlement and record in front of specific judges) to their archive of court data, meaning that companies have access to hard statistics regarding the performance of the attorneys competing to represent them. It also far outstrips the amount of information currently available to journalists, non-profit organizations and academics, creating new opportunities for the study of court systems in action.

“This is going to change everything,” says Premonition Business Development Director Nathan Huber. “It’s going to turn the industry on its head.”

Contact:

Nathan Huber
Premonition L.L.C.
Business Development Director
[email protected]
(615) 364-0924

Source: Industry Week