The authors discuss recent trends in the applications of statistical sampling in legal disputes, particularly in the context of the pervasiveness of big data.
Statistical sampling, already a common tool in legal disputes, is seeing increasing applications as the collection and analysis of big data become ubiquitous. Sampling is often used where reviewing or analyzing the entire population of interest would be prohibitively expensive or time-consuming. Sampling methodologies can circumvent this issue by selecting a sample of the data to analyze and then utilizing statistical methods to extrapolate the results to the broader population. This approach has been accepted in a variety of legal contexts as a practical and cost-efficient way to answer case-specific questions, typically related to establishing liability and estimating damages.
In this article, coauthors Carlos Brain, J.B. Doyle, and Robert Doles discuss recent trends in the applications of statistical sampling in legal disputes, particularly in the context of the pervasiveness of big data.
This article was originally published in Westlaw in October 2025.
Silicon Valley 
