As different sectors are waking up to realize the significance of big data, the law firms are also catching up. After all it is one of the sectors that have to deal with literally massive amounts of data.
The popularity of legal analytics software like Premonition is a pointer to the fact that even though the industry was initially slow on the uptake, it is now ready to harness the power of big data to derive profit.
So what exactly is legal analytics?
Legal analytics involves application of data analysis to mine legal documents and dockets to derive valuable insight. Now there is no need to confuse it with legal research or, to think that it is an alternative to the popular practice. Legal analytics is all about detecting patterns in past case records to enable firms strategize better in future. It basically aims to offer aid in legal research. Training received in an analytics lab could help a professional achieve proficiency.
Legal analytics platform combines sophisticated technologies of machine learning, NLP. It goes through past unstructured data and via cleaning and organizing that data into a coherent structure it analyzes the data to detect patterns.
How law firms can benefit from legal analytics?
Law firms having to deal with exhaustive data holding key information can truly gain advantage with the application of legal analytics. Primarily because of the fact it would enable them to anticipate what the possible outcome might be in order to strategize better and increase their chances of turning a case in their favor. Data Science training could be of immense value for firms willing to adopt this technology.
Not just that but implementation of legal analytics could also help the law firms whether big or, small run their operations and market their service in a more efficient manner and thereby increasing the percentage of ROI.
The key advantages of legal analytics could be as followed
- The chances of winning a case could be better as by analyzing the data of past litigations, useful insight could be derived regarding the key issues like duration, judge’s decision and also certain trends that might help the firm develop a smarter strategy to win a particular case.
- Cases often continue for a long period before resulting in a loss. To save money and time spent on a particular case, legal analytics could help lawyers decide whether to continue on or, to settle.
- Often legal firms need to hire outside expertise to help with their case, the decision being costly in nature must be backed by data. With legal analytics it would be easier to go through data regarding a particular candidate and his performance in similar cases in the past.
- There could be a significant improvement in the field of operational efficiency. In most of the situations lawyers spend huge amount of time in sorting through case documents and other data. This way they are wasting their time in finding background information when they could be spending time in offering consultation to a potential client and securing another case thereby adding financial benefit to the firm. The task of data analysis should better be handled by the legal analytics software.
- At the end of the day a law firm is just another business, so, to ensure that the business operations of the firm are being managed with efficiency, legal analytics software could come in handy. Whether it’s budgeting or, recruiting or retaining old staff valuable insight could be gained, which could be channeled to rake in more profit.
There has been an increase in the percentage of law firms which have adopted legal analytics, but, overall this industry is still showing reluctance in fully embracing the power. The professionals who have apprehension they need to set aside the bias they have and recognize the potential of this technology. May be they should consider enrolling in a Data analyst training institute to gain sharper business insight.
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