When Big Data Meets Big Law – the Role of Data in Legal Services

Big data is having a tremendous affect on the future of the legal services profession.

8 Min Read
Shutterstock Licensed Photo - By Panchenko Vladimir

Many industries are starting to realize the true benefits they can get from analyzing and visualizing the many amounts of data is designed today. More and more conventional industries are starting to look into this direction: big data. One of these industries is the legal industry, with all legal companies and law firms included. 

There are some questions that legal advisors have: are there any real benefits of big data for law companies? How can it help come across the many court procedural issues? How can big data be implemented in the legal practice? Although this is a new practice for this industry, there are some examples to consider. Let’s dive into the subject. 

Big data benefits for law firms 

Law firms tend to have large piles of paper documents. In order to correctly collect, store, and organize all the data, they must be analyzed in a quite fast manner. Nowadays, computer science has become strong and affordable enough so that companies can store all the data they want. In the future, this could lead to totally new visions in some cases, and enable lawyers to answer any questions. 

Law firms can now use algorithms that provide specific predictions on how the case could work out. Technology has made it possible: law firms can now determine whether a case is worth taking in only 20 minutes. Not long ago, they’ve been used to wait at least 20 days until they would decide whether a case is worth it or not. 

Big data will bring many benefits to the legal industry, for both lawyers and clients. For example, law firms will easily target the right price for a specific case. There are many tools available, including Sky Analytics, that will help companies reduce their costs. This will help give your company a view into the expenses of legal services, as well as help you determine how to get the best deal on legal services, regardless of the location. 

Also, clients could benefit of the big data in the legal industry. There are many apps that allow users to determine how much to expect to pay for lawyer’s fees. Big data can be delivered as evidence in court. Some examples show that big data is collected and analyzed and can be acknowledged as evidence. The legal industry always had tremendous data but it always went offline, on paper, in documents, etc. Now, the legal industry is slowly opening its gates to the digital world, as this brings vast new opportunities to positive work. Then data is digitalized, it can be far easier to connect with other public data systems, as well as providing new insights and clarifications. it means that it allows law firms to find the exact answer to the most complex question. 

Big data also helps the HR department in law companies to resolve critical situations and sort data out. This can really help law firms find potential new employees, see how an applicant handles an assessment, and find recruits that really match their company’s requirements.  

Comparing Lawyers

As in any other industry, clients use the internet to find specific products or businesses. And they research until they find the best one. People become more and more familiar with the accessibility of comparing services, products, and they expect to do the same with legal services. 

As the experts from UK law agree, it’s becoming more and more common for people to use data analytics to evaluate law firms. They want to know everything, from negotiation results to costs for travel, and other costs of services, it’s becoming easier to compare lawyers. Thus, law companies can take this trend into consideration and collect client’s data so they can use it to create many interesting and attractive stories about their services. 

Big data is still at the beginning in the legal industry, and there is still a long way to go. Besides, law firms hold extremely confidential data about their clients, so they are skeptical about digitizing all the data, just because of privacy and security concerns. For too many companies, big data is risky, as this comes with a lot of challenges. But time has passed, and now, big data is making a lot of waves in the legal industry. 

Data designed to be digitized and combined with other technology has the potential to make a lawyers’ job a lot easier. They can now find more pertinent cases through better systems. Another important aspect is that they can find documents and large texts more quickly and consistently. To analyze court cases and forecast decisions, lawyers need data. But they must find the right type of data that can be easily understandable by machine systems. 

The need for modern tech tools increased significantly in the past several years. It’s not surprising to realize that companies invested in tools so they can better deal with their documents. But this is more of a technology, rather than a tool – one that focuses on dealing with big data. this technology is relatively recent, but not as recent, since most industries already implemented it in their processes. Companies, including the legal sector, are starting to realize the value of big data in industries. 

Benefits of big data in the legal industry:

  • Predictive analytics 
  • Instant access to critical information and data
  • Empowers companies to take actionable insights and smart decisions about client’s fees

There isn’t a doubt that the legal industry needs big data so they manage documents safely and securely. This way, law firms won’t have to worry about organizing, storing, and accessing more documents, whenever and wherever they want.

Big data has proved to be efficient in the legal industry, assuring that the time lawyers need to finish research is significantly decreased.

The future of lawyers – Big data, AI, legal tech, and online courts. These are some of the technologies that will revolutionize forever the legal sector. As a lawyer, you only have a choice: you wither compete with these systems or help build them.

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