We are living in a data-driven age, and there’s no denying that advanced innovations of Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and Data Science have transformed every industry around the world.
In the recent political campaigns, data analytics proved to be the key factor for electoral success. It is truly surprising for many, how such information could lead an electoral campaign down the path to a big win.
The Legal Industry has also started discovering the merits of data analytics. Data and analytics have been transforming the way legal firms formulate legal strategies, interact with clients, and complete discovery of their projects. Data Analytics will give a big move to the legal world and help lawyers in driving more informed and better decision-making in the years to come.
So, before taking a deep dive into the benefits of data analytics in the legal industry, let’s learn what exactly “Data Analytics” is and what’s the reason behind its rapidly growing popularity in the legal industry?
What is Data Analytics?
The term ‘Data analytics’ refers to the collection, inspection, and modelling of data to bring out the insights of real-world processes and make precise & informed decisions about them. It has been rapidly grabbing hold in different sectors as a method of making more appropriate & objective measurements to mitigate risks, maximise profits, and acquire valuable insights into the true nature of any human-driven system.
Let’s take an example of Data analytics in the field of sports. The sports industry was perhaps one of the first industries to embrace the benefits of data analytics. All renowned sports associations use volumes of data to thoroughly analyse the past performances of their opponent teams. They break down all sorts of accessible data to understand the rivalry team’s shortcomings. Then they utilise that information to curate an arsenal of both defensive and offensive sports strategies.
It’s natural that the legal sector would also want to leverage the benefits of data analytics. Nowadays, we have professional legal teams who have proficiency in both law and technology. Using the available cutting-edge, certified tools, they decipher every bit of legal data, including trial results, witness testimony, court final decisions, points of reference, and much more. This gives their side an upper hand. The innovative technology of Data Analytics simply adds more practicality to the legal profession.
In the past, lawyers used to spend hours studying books of court records to carefully win over cases of their clients. But, today, legal cases data is being recorded through digital platforms, which is more accurate and easily accessible. Data analytics a.k.a. legal analytics, offers tremendous potential to law firms to enhance their business model, excel in client’s expectations, and extend profitability.
While there is a lot of interest from the legal industry to embrace the concept of data analytics as the main source of data channelling and predictive analysis, it is in the very early phase of the adoption. However, most legal firms and corporate legal organisations have started acknowledging the importance of more informed data capture and recognising that their focus in this area ought to reach beyond mere financial data.
Now when we have learned all about data analytics, let’s understand how data analytics can benefit the legal industry?
Enhancing the Effectiveness of Marketing Campaigns
There are numerous functions that do not come under the practice of law and marketing is one among them. Today, renowned business organisations use data to keep an eye on their competitions’ offerings, effectively target their customer base, streamline communications with industry experts, and analyse the viability of their marketing campaign outcomes. Legal firms that utilise data analytics for their marketing can have a better understanding of the target audience and can focus on areas where marketing can deliver maximum ROI.
Driving Profits
Law firms can drive profitability by identifying opportunities to enhance client relationships. By incorporating legal analytics into the internal financial reporting process, they can effectively analyse their clients’ data and grab the opportunities for extending current client relationships.
Let’s take an example of automated trend analysis that can help law firms understand their clients who could be interested in selling divisions or significant groupings of assets, raising capitals, or issuing securities in other ways. It can also be used for creating an automatic alert in an account that shows no communication and notification for more than a predetermined number of days. Data analytics can assist here and automate the review of all important KPIs that can expand work opportunities with existing clients. This strategy can truly prove to be a game-changer if the work processes are reviewed automatically on a regular basis rather than checking them once in a while.
Improving Strategic Focus
Utilising the available client’s data in strategic decision-making is important as it can reveal insights about industry specialisation, subject matters, and resource deployment. This can help the firms shift their strategic focus and enterprise-level decision-making across all aspects of the business such as geographical focus, talent acquisition, business expansion, and profitability. This clarity of purpose can empower the firms to rapidly graph directions, bear with environmental changes, and adjust the objectives within the organisation.
Amending Pricing and Achieving Efficiency
Data Analytics can help in determining the significant benefits of a case type. Like every business, legal firms also need to bring in cash and profitability. So, depending upon the case, the measure of time and work that goes into the case should drive profits. Law firms can connect time and finance systems to analyse and determine pricing structure and create appropriate staffing models.
Legal procedures and strategies can be streamlined with the use of data analytics. Filtering through case emails and client records can take long hours and sometimes several days to investigate and pass judgment for a case. But with the use of data analytics, legal professionals can significantly accelerate the processes as well as save time and money. Legal Analytics assists law firms to dig for existing information proficiently, rather than grappling with disrupted heaps of data for a long time. Now, with data analytics, they don’t need to invest long hours and energies in extracting case insights.
Understanding Historical Case Information to Win Cases
Another benefit that law firms can achieve with the use of legal data analytics is to acquire good outcomes and win cases for their clients. Using analytics, law firms can get insights into the work patterns of certain judges, courts, and past cases similar to their current cases. It can also provide more accurate insights on how long a court case might last. One of the most important benefits of data analytics in the legal industry is that it can give law firms useful insights about their opponents such as how much experience they have with similar cases or how many open cases do they currently have. Such information is significantly important to analyse before a case begins so that legal professionals can effectively plan and deliver their arguments in court.
Final Thoughts!
Like many other rapidly evolving technologies, legal data analytics is set to drive significant transformations in the practice of law. With the right use of this technology, legal firms can stand tall among their competitors and establish strong client relationships. By utilising the power of data analytics, law firms can enhance their processes, optimise costs, improve productivity, and increase revenues. Today, when the world has moved towards a completely data-driven age, legal firms are also grabbing the right data solutions to bring efficiency and transparency.
In this post, we have elaborated just a few examples of how law firms can leverage the power of data and analytics. But the opportunities are endless.
The future is data-driven. Are you ready?
