Analytics will become essential to lawyers' ability to leverage big data

Just after Super Bowl weekend, with New York City's streets still full of slush and snow, I presented at two legal conferences: LegalTech and the CIO Forum. I also attended many related vendor receptions, which probably caused my nephrologist some concern, but since I survived, I would like to share with you my perspective.

At LegalTech, there was plenty of talk about eDiscovery and information governance - more of the latter than ever before as its stock rises with the maturation of eDiscovery. Underpinning both eDiscovery and information governance - and indeed much of the innovation in legal technology - is analytics.

Wikipedia defines analytics as "the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data". We explored this topic in a session entitled 'The intelligent law firm: How analytics is helping law firms compete and win in today's increasingly competitive world'. In this session, Ted Ferguson of Shearman & Sterling, Brent Miller of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and I discussed with Derek Schueren of Recommind how analytics is transforming the way we work.

Think about the effect of the last decade's increase in the volume of data on how lawyers search for information. Relying solely on keyword search is increasingly frustrating as data volumes grow and searches return too many hits, with too little context, thus overwhelming lawyers' capacity to identify accurately what they need.

That's where analytics come in, delivered, for example, via dynamic smart filters based on user profiles and work history. These might enable, for example, a lawyer to identify and staff a deal with people who previously have done similar work in the target jurisdiction for clients in the same industry.

Another area in which analytics can help improve productivity is in the automatic categorisation and filing of email. Our lawyers - from junior associates to managing partners - conduct much of their work through email. Analytics can automatically suggest matters to which a document or an email is related, based on its content and recipients, and enable the lawyer to file the email with a single click.

Given the explosion in the volume of information, I expect analytics to become an essential tool enabling lawyers to leverage 'big data', rather than be overwhelmed by it.

At the CIO Forum, together with Geoff Joynt of the Frayman Group, I presented on business process management for strategic business intake, with a focus on matter information lifecycle management. The session covered the shaping of the intake process to protect and serve the business goals of the firm.

We discussed opportunities for law firms to leverage technology and workflow to speed up business intake and conflict clearance, to ensure best pricing practices, and to analyse data collected throughout matter lifecycle in order to make faster and better business decisions. We also discussed how the legal industry can benefit from adopting an 'assembly line' approach to some repetitive tasks, and followed matter pathways process maps as an example of what lies ahead of us.

While any car manufacturer knows weeks in advance what parts it will need to install at what phase, we - as an industry - have a much harder time predicting the resources needed to deliver our products - meaning the matters we handle on behalf of our clients. To achive that predictability, we need to find commonality within our prior work history and apply it to our future work.

I expect automated and semi-automated workflows to become essential to the future increase of both efficiency and work quality in law firms.