Data Analytics in the Legal Sector
BY
Steve Glaveski
Data has transformed business in the past ten years, with technology supporting the fast and sophisticated mining of large datasets.
It has transformed the likes of advertising, marketing, logistics, healthcare, and financial services, and the legal industry is now going through a datafication of its own, albeit a slow one.
While applications of ever-improving data analytics capabilities to the law will no doubt evolve with time, below are five predominant ways data can and is being used by forward-thinking law firms today.
1. Predictive Analytics
Whilst not yet mature, use cases for data analytics is increasingly being extended to the prediction of litigation, case and sentencing outcomes. This can help law firms guide case settlement, strategic decision making, and whether or not to take on a case in the first place.
2. e-Discovery
Electronic discovery - the identification, collection, and production of electronically stored information to support legal proceeds and investigations is one of the most pervasive uses of data analytics today. Such information would include but isn’t limited to emails, documents, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and video files, social media, and web sites.
E-discovery tools ultimately help law firms to dramatically reduce the time, cost, and scope of discovery. Software vendors such as Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, DISCO, and Exterro are leading the charge in this space.
3. Business Development
Data can increasingly be used to help law firms identify new business opportunities, and guide their business development efforts towards opportunities and prospects that are much more likely to convert, based on myriad factors.
This can be done through the analytics of landing page behaviour, credit files, media mentions, social media interactions, as well as CRM data.
4. Legal Bots
Chatbots, or legalbots, are being designed to help audiences get help with specific questions. This can be used to assist existing clients, as part of the business development process, or in a pro bono manner for members of the general public who can’t afford legal representation.
Stanford’s DoNotPay has helped over 160,000 people resolve parking tickets, and on the back of this success it is now evolving towards helping refugees with their legal issues.
Data has transformed business in the past ten years, with technology supporting the fast and sophisticated mining of large datasets.
It has transformed the likes of advertising, marketing, logistics, healthcare, and financial services, and the legal industry is now going through a datafication of its own, albeit a slow one.
While applications of ever-improving data analytics capabilities to the law will no doubt evolve with time, below are five predominant ways data can and is being used by forward-thinking law firms today.
1. Predictive Analytics
Whilst not yet mature, use cases for data analytics is increasingly being extended to the prediction of litigation, case and sentencing outcomes. This can help law firms guide case settlement, strategic decision making, and whether or not to take on a case in the first place.
2. e-Discovery
Electronic discovery - the identification, collection, and production of electronically stored information to support legal proceeds and investigations is one of the most pervasive uses of data analytics today. Such information would include but isn’t limited to emails, documents, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and video files, social media, and web sites.
E-discovery tools ultimately help law firms to dramatically reduce the time, cost, and scope of discovery. Software vendors such as Relativity, Everlaw, Logikcull, DISCO, and Exterro are leading the charge in this space.
3. Business Development
Data can increasingly be used to help law firms identify new business opportunities, and guide their business development efforts towards opportunities and prospects that are much more likely to convert, based on myriad factors.
This can be done through the analytics of landing page behaviour, credit files, media mentions, social media interactions, as well as CRM data.
4. Legal Bots
Chatbots, or legalbots, are being designed to help audiences get help with specific questions. This can be used to assist existing clients, as part of the business development process, or in a pro bono manner for members of the general public who can’t afford legal representation.
Stanford’s DoNotPay has helped over 160,000 people resolve parking tickets, and on the back of this success it is now evolving towards helping refugees with their legal issues.
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about the author
Steve Glaveski is a Harvard Business Review contributor on all things high-performance at work. He is the author of Employee to Entrepreneur (Wiley, 2019), and co-founder of Collective Campus, the boutique consultancy behind NewLaw Academy that has generated millions of dollars selling discretionary services to many of the biggest organizations in the world - without the benefit of an established brand,pre-existing relationships, a corporate card, or a large team. Steve previously consulted to the likes of King & Wood Mallesons, Mills Oakley, and Cornwalls, and worked in consulting for EY and KPMG.
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