Big data is finally reaching the legal profession, a profession accented with risk aversion by its nature. In a world where small farmers selling watermelon in an open market on Sunday morning can accept a $4 credit card payment on their smartphone, 20 percent of all legal bills still come by way of US postal service or as PDF attachments in emails. However, the pressure to reduce costs has slowly but surely begun to prod the legal profession along.
Attorneys can enter the big data game by starting with perspectives and concerns focused on the smaller data story happening within their own departments. “Whether they know it or not, they’re capturing data all the time via systems they already have in place,” said Kris Satkunas, Director of Strategic Consulting, LexisNexis CounselLink. “If they have the right tools and capabilities to listen and understand, their data can help them tell important stories about budgets, risks, matters and other performance measurements that will guide them toward success.”
Many in-house counsels rely on LexisNexis CounselLink to track and manage legal spend as a primary capability. After processing every invoice, the summary reports helps them learn which matters cost more, which outside counsel firms deliver value at a reasonable cost, how spending tracks against budget and more. “That’s important information to know, but it’s a limited story until you answer the question: ‘Compared to what?’” said Satkunas.
“That’s where the bigger data story takes over with CounselLink Insight, a benchmarking tool that matches a company’s metrics against a broad base of other companies,” Satkunas said. “With a detailed database aggregated from hundreds of corporate clients, thousands of outside counsel, and more than a million invoices representing billions of dollars, it helps attorneys view and understand their department’s performance in the context of a bigger universe.”
Ultimately, the legal industry needs tools that help them not only pull the data from the systems they uses, but they need to be able to organize the data to uncover powerful insights. With more quantitative data at their fingertips, legal departments can drive better decisions and demonstrate the value of their work.
Learn more about how CounselLink can help leverage your department’s data at www.counsellink.com.