We live in an information-on-demand society. Ask a question of your preferred AI, get an answer, case closed. But for law firm litigators building a case, that assumption can be the difference between winning and losing — a lesson Reuters explored in a recent profile of History Associates’ own Dr. Jason Gart.
Reuters columnist Sara Randazzo spent time with Jason and a handful of the litigators who rely on him, and came back with a simple, almost old-fashioned insight: sometimes the fact that decides a lawsuit isn’t sitting in any database at all. It’s in a box of microfilm at a dusty archive, or — in one case Randazzo describes — inside a decades-old Macintosh desktop that had sat forgotten in a Kentucky garage for years.
That computer held the near-final documents from a 1990s asset sale, and a legal team needed what was on it to prove their client had purchased only assets—not the environmental liabilities—linked to a property facing costly remediation. No AI tool was going to surface that machine. Finding it took newspaper archive research, land records, and the persistence to track down a long-retired attorney and get access to his old files. The result: the client avoided what could have been a significant settlement. As one attorney put it, “we found the needle.”
It’s not just about digging deep—sometimes it’s about knowing where not to dig. In another example, a litigator described how their first question on a new matter is often simply whether there was wartime activity at a given site, as this can determine whether the federal government could ultimately share liability for cleanup. As the attorney explained, having a historian involved can quickly reveal whether it’s worth investigating further. That’s the other half of the value: not just finding the needle, but knowing fast whether there’s a haystack worth searching in the first place.
It’s a niche field. And it exists because of a gap that isn’t shrinking as fast as AI adoption is. Less than 4% of the National Archives’ text pages are digitized. The rest of the historical record—old permits, corporate filings, land records, superseded regulations, internal memos—isn’t anywhere a language model could have found it, no matter how good the model gets. When a case turns on what a company knew and when, that gap isn’t a footnote. It’s often the whole case.
This is the discipline History Associates Incorporated has built a 45-year litigation practice around, and the Reuters profile is a window into a much broader body of work. The same instincts that led Gart and his team to the Kentucky garage are employed in state-of-knowledge investigations, potentially responsible party searches, corporate succession research, FOIA and open records requests, and product liability and toxic tort research.
It’s also, notably, work historians insist on doing without a stake in the outcome. Gart and his colleagues bill hourly rather than on contingency, precisely so the facts stay the facts. “We are advocates for the facts, not for the client,” as Jason put it, even when what turns up doesn’t help the case it was meant to support. That’s a harder sell than a tidy narrative, but it’s exactly why litigators keep the work, and the credibility that comes with it, at arm’s length from the outcome. It is also part of why Chambers USA ranked HAI in Litigation Support this year, citing the team’s ability to track down little-known sources and “sleuth out elusive facts” that others wouldn’t think to chase.
The Reuters piece is a good showcase of that work, but the best way to see how it applies to your own caseload is a conversation, not an article. HAI hosts short lunch-and-learns for law firms that want to see how historical research fits into litigation strategy, with real examples across environmental, product liability, and successor-liability matters. Consider it your own invitation to come sleuth with us.
Read the full article on Reuters:
In litigation, when AI falls short historians step in
Bryan Long
Sales Manager
blong@historyassociates.com
560.250.7868
Litigation Support Services
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For over 45 years, HAI has helped law firms, corporations, and government agencies uncover the historical facts in support of complex litigation. Our experts deliver clear, defensible research grounded in verifiable sources, from site histories and state-of-knowledge investigations to product liability and corporate genealogy research.
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