Data has become a critical asset in the legal industry, particularly to corporate legal departments that seek to maximize efficiency and optimize outcomes. Useful data in this context includes information on billing practices, time management, budget performance, and matter history.
Electronic billing, matter management, and other systems that help manage legal workflows capture key aspects of the company’s legal operations and generate this “big data.” In order to effectively manage and analyze it, legal teams need to understand big data and the best practices for leveraging it. Our new ebook, The four V’s of big data, is designed to help legal professionals with this understanding. Here is a sampling of what you can learn from it.
What are the four V’s?
Volume: Volume is the size of the data set to be analyzed and processed. It is now not unusual for companies to have data sets in the range of terabytes and petabytes. While data quality is also extremely important, it is generally true that a bigger data set leads to better-to-better results from your analysis.
Variety: Variety refers to all the structured and unstructured data that has the possibility of being generated. This data can be generated either by humans or automatically by devices. Variety is all about the ability to collect data from different sources and classify it into various categories. More data sources give you a better foundation for detecting broader trends.
Velocity: Velocity is the speed at which data is generated and transferred. It is particularly important for companies that need their data to flow quickly so that up-to-date information is always available to support decision-making. In addition to collecting data quickly, companies need to be able to process it in a timely manner in order for it to be useful.
Veracity: Veracity is the truthfulness, accuracy, and reliability of the data. Data quality is, in large part, a reflection of veracity. The quality of captured data can vary greatly, which can have a negative impact on accurate analysis. In the legal industry, a single wrong decision based on an inaccurate or biased model can create serious legal and financial challenges.
What can big data do for legal teams?
The collection and processing of big data, as well as the process of finding a technology partner to help you execute these plans, involves planning and effort for professionals who are already busy. But there are good reasons why so many companies choose to overcome those obstacles and implement big data solutions. The benefits of doing so are substantial:
- Big data helps legal departments manage strategy by understanding the organization's legal demand and spending.
- It provides visibility into the activities of law firms and helps legal teams improve outside counsel management, especially during panel review periods.
- Big data helps legal departments manage spend by measuring internal and external matter costs across firms and practice areas, as well as many other dimensions.
Particularly when paired with the power of AI, big data can help drive strategy and reduce costs. AI can recognize patterns in data that humans are not able to notice, generating valuable business intelligence that can lead to improved decisions.
By partnering with the right experts and using the best technology, legal departments can turn their data into a valuable asset that helps them better manage all aspects of their legal operations. Because of the sheer amount of data these teams have access to, they are well positioned to pivot to a data-driven strategy and achieve their savings, compliance, and efficiency goals.
To learn more about the importance and benefits of big data in legal, download our ebook The four V’s of big data.
