Analytics will define how in house counsel will hire their outside counsel. Just as Facebook mines our personal data to allow advertisers to target us with appropriate ads, companies will require firms who are interested in joining their outside counsel panels to make available all their billing and firm data to measure the firm against their competitors. The data is there to measure a firm’s efficiency, responsiveness and success rate.
Consider companies getting access to all of a firm’s redacted billing records to evaluate how long it takes for them to prepare for a deposition, a hearing or trial? How long it takes to draft a motion or a research memo? Also, what if companies could access all public records to see how often a firm went to trial and won? How about how often a firm argues discovery motions and wins them? What if that analysis could be done for each lawyer at a given firm?
