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; allowing an administrator to manually modify the legal data, input supplemental data, or both, wherein a data set is derived from the legal data and the supplemental data; identifying one or more portions of the data set, each portion including a legal event; generating a metadata element for each legal event identified in the one or more portions, wherein the metadata element is one of a plurality of metadata elements; 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; constructing a legal database that includes the data set and the plurality of metadata elements, wherein the legal database is searchable by legal event; generating a graphical user interface; allowing, via the graphical user interface, a user to specify 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 allowing the user to adjust the analytic results by modifying the search parameters.