Abstract
Individual judgments of lower courts and tribunals do not normally have much influence on the development of the law. Also, in many areas of law there are so many such judgments that it would be very difficult to try to keep up with them. Academics don't teach about those cases, focusing instead on landmark judgments of appellate courts. For similar reasons, practitioners (judges, lawyers representing clients) mostly rely on appellate cases. And even though practitioners may know more lower‐level judgments than academics, in many fields no one has a truly comprehensive perspective. The same lower court judgments that are of such limited interest today are crucial for developing artificial intelligence (AI) (machine learning) solutions that could assist in providing legal advice. A machine‐learning algorithm could build a model of how the courts have applied the law (on a particular issue) that works like an experienced lawyer's intuition and memory.