1. A method for acquiring and processing legal data, the method comprising: accessing a source of legal information; retrieving legal data from the source of legal information; recognizing words in the legal data by performing word recognition on the legal data; receiving input from an administrator manually modifying the legal data by modifying text previously incorrectly recognized during a word recognition process and inputting supplemental data by adding metadata to the legal data where no metadata element has already been generated; identifying one or more portions of a data set derived from the legal data and the supplemental data, each portion including a legal event; generating a metadata element for each legal event identified in the one or more portions, wherein a plurality of metadata elements of different types are generated for at least one of the portions; associating each of the one or more portions with at least one of the plurality of metadata elements, the at least one metadata element signaling which legal events are identified within each portion; identifying, based on one or more of the recognized words, references to legal events within the one or more portions of the data set; identifying a first portion, within the one or more portions of the data set, in which a reference to a legal event was found; associating the first portion with a different metadata element corresponding to the legal events referenced in the first portion; constructing a legal database that is searchable by legal event and includes the data set and the plurality of metadata elements; generating a graphical user interface; receiving input, via the graphical user interface, from a user specifying search parameters used to identify a segment of the data set; applying legal analytics to the segment of the data set; presenting, via the graphical user interface, analytic results that include a graphical summary; and receiving input from the user adjusting the analytic results by modifying the search parameters.