Module 4
How long it takes: durations, percentiles, open cases and honest timelines
‘How long will it take?’ is the question clients dread to ask and lawyers dread to answer, because the honest answer is ‘it depends’, and the usual dishonest answer is a figure with no range. Data can do better than either. With a table of past cases you can say how long half of them took, how long nine in ten took and how the time changed with the kind of case. But durations carry a trap that ruins most simple analyses: cases that are still open. They are the longest cases, and they are missing from the table of finished ones. An average of the cases that closed is therefore too optimistic, sometimes badly. This module shows how to measure time, why percentiles are better than averages and how the Kaplan–Meier estimate lets you use open cases honestly. The Duration Estimator in the labs shows the effect with invented data.
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See what is included in All-Access →General education on analysing litigation data, using invented cases, courts and figures. It is not legal advice and does not predict the result of any real case. Rules on court data, data protection, confidentiality and the analysis of judges differ between countries and change: check the rules that apply to you.
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