Data-Driven Law : Data Analytics and the New Legal Services

Data has reshaped industries around the world, from finance and medicine to sports. Law has trailed behind other industries, but is quickly following suit. For many years, law firms made important decisions – including very large decisions – based on limited experience (at best), or hunches (at worst). Data science is growing quickly in law firms, law schools, and corporate legal departments. Sophisticated clients not only prefer firms that use data analysis in their practice – they soon will demand it. In Data Analytics Applications in Law, leading practitioners examine the cutting edge of this trend, looking at new tools from our present, as well as the future of data analytics in law.

Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics and the New Legal Services helps legal professionals meet the challenges posed by a data-driven approach to delivering legal services. Its chapters are written by leading experts who cover such topics as:

• Mining legal data
• Computational law
• Uncovering bias through the use of Big Data
• Quantifying the quality of legal services
• Data mining and decision-making
• Contract analytics and contract standards

In addition to providing clients with data-based insight, legal firms can track a matter with data from beginning to end, from the marketing spend through to the type of matter, hours spent, billed, and collected, including metrics on profitability and success. Firms can organize and collect documents after a matter and even automate them for reuse. Data on marketing related to a matter can be an amazing source of insight about which practice areas are most profitable.

Data-driven decision-making requires firms to think differently about their workflow. Most firms warehouse their files, never to be seen again after the matter closes. Running a data-driven firm requires lawyers and their teams to treat information about the work as part of the service, and to collect, standardize, and analyze matter data from cradle to grave. More than anything, using data in a law practice requires a different mindset about the value of this information. This book helps legal professionals to develop this data-driven mindset.