Like any industry, also the legal industry is affected dramatically by big data analytics. Law firms that do not want to make the move to a data-driven legal practice are going to lose out from the innovative legal firms that embrace big data. Doing manual document review, using printed documents and storing documents in old-fashioned physical cabinets is no longer enough to win in court. Big Data is rapidly changing the way law firms do business.
This video was taken at the Big Law Business summit and it shows how some of the top law firms in the US are applying big data to improve their business. Law firms can no longer be reactive, they have to become pro-active if they want to stay in business. In short, there are 5 ways how data analytics is rapidly changing law firms:
- Certain legal cases require certain expertise, something which might be in-house or something that need to come from outside. Big Data enables law firms to better inform whom to hire for outside counseling or, and thats especially relevant for large law firms, which lawyer would best fit a certain case.
- Information is power and having access to massive amounts of documents can only be useful if you are able to quickly digest the information and find the right information that can be useful for a case. Big data enables law firms to rapidly sift through massive amounts of documents to find the right piece of content. When you use for example a NoSQL Search technology, it becomes possible to easily find the right document at the right moment, a lot faster.
- When less time is spent on finding the right information in massive amounts of documents, law firms can price their services more competitively, resulting in more business from wider target group.
- Improved staffing due to access to a lot more data. When law firms want to hire the top candidate, it is important they have a good understanding of who the candidate is and how the candidates expertise matches the requirements of the law firm. Big Data enables law firms to include all kinds of new data during the application process including social media data and how an applicant performs during an assessment.
- Better and faster predict the chances of winning a certain case based on a lot of documents of similar cases and thus whether it is worth taking a certain case or not. If you can better determine whether to take a case and you can offer a lower price due to big data, this is a serious competitive advantage.
Big Data offers the legal industry ample benefits and this video from Bloomberg gives us a great insight how different law firms in the US think Big Data will impact them.
