Changing the Way Law Firms Practice, Compete and Win in a Data-Driven World

Increasingly, legal analytics are providing data-driven insights to help lawyers develop strategies and work more efficiently. But what are legal analytics and why are they important? We spoke to Neil Magenheim, Director of Strategy with Lex Machina®, to get a broad overview. A division of LexisNexis®, Lex Machina provides artificial intelligence-powered legal analytics to help lawyers win new business and optimize outcomes for both their clients and their firms.

Neil takes a deeper look at these solutions during our webinar and demonstrates how legal analytics can help enhance your practice by giving you a winning edge over your competitors, regardless of their size or expertise.

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Q: What exactly are legal analytics? It seems to be a term that’s thrown around quite a bit these days.

Neil Magenheim: Many people might be unaware of what “legal analytics” actually means. Legal analytics are the discovery, interpretation and communication of valuable insights in legal data. That includes the process of examining data sets in order to draw conclusions about the information they contain, increasingly utilizing specialized technology-enabled systems and software to help make decisions on which to build legal strategies.

Legal analytics are comprised of three main areas: litigation analytics, transactional analytics and regulatory analytics. Like their larger counterparts, a smaller law firm’s practice may touch on all three areas, so there are tools we can use for each. It’s a data-driven world now – we cannot afford to be left behind.

Q: Why do law firms need legal analytics?

NM: Clients and their data-focused businesses are prompting small law firms to become more data-driven. It’s really table stakes at this point. A recent study by Lex Machina found that more than 70% of law firms surveyed say they leverage data to demonstrate their expertise to clients or to gain competitive insights in litigation. Corporate clients and in-house counsel expect their law firms to use legal analytics – they want their in-house legal department and outside law firms to speak the same language. Corporations also use data to screen their law firms and to ultimately manage their legal strategies.

Legal analytics enable a lawyer to easily answer questions like “How often does a judge presiding over a certain type of case grant transfer motions?” They also can confirm, for example, that a client shouldn’t spend money on a summary judgment motion when it’s almost certain to fail, based on historical patterns that surface in the data.

Q: How can small firms benefit from legal analytics?

NM: Small firms can use legal analytics to punch above their weight. Big firms have business development or knowledge management teams, while smaller or solo firms typically don’t. But by leveraging legal analytics, you can level the playing field and reduce the competition gap, maximize efficiency and save time. For your firm’s business operations, legal analytics can help you produce accurate pricing, gain intelligence for pursuing new business and demonstrate the firm’s capabilities to clients and prospects. For the practice of law, legal analytics help you gain competitive insights, conduct essential early case assessment, and determine case strategy.

Small and solo law practices require efficiency and accuracy. They need to work quickly to serve each client without compromising the quality of their work. Legal analytics are powerful tools that can significantly enhance your specialized practice. To learn more, click below to watch the Legal Analytics webinar.

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