Decision-Aiding Software and the Law

Decision-aiding software processes a set of goals, alternatives for achieving them, and relations between goals and alternatives to arrive at the best alternative, combination, allocation, or predictive decision-rule. The most popular decision-aiding software employed by lawyers uses the spreadsheet form and implicit theory for multi-criteria decision making. Available alternatives are placed on the rows, goals to be achieved on the columns, relations between alternatives and goals in the cells, and an overall total for each alternative at the far right. The software can determine what it would take to bring a nonwinning alternative up to first place. Such software is useful in framing inputs, overcoming analytic problems, and satisfying diverse users. It is used increasingly by people in private and government law practice for such tasks as choosing arbitrators, predicting case outcomes, and deciding whether to go to trial or settle out of court.