Data has a lot to say in today’s world, if you know how to speak its language. Businesspeople have become highly fluent, but what about the legal department? Most legal professionals are still stumbling around like tourists in foreign capitals slowly thumbing through the guidebook of common phrases. By understanding what data has to say, legal professionals can collect and analyze information in order to support the underlying business (their clients) with smarter decisions. And this fluency leads to improved risk management and results.
What Is Data Analytics?
The phrase “data analytics” may either send attorneys diving for their dictionaries (or to Google) or make their eyes glaze over. Yet data analytics isn’t as daunting or complicated as it may sound. Instead of high-tech number crunching, it is simply finding patterns in numbers, figuring out what those patterns are saying and then communicating those patterns to facilitate informed and effective decision making. With this approach the legal department, working with clients, can create a map to see how it has performed historically and predict how it can and should act going forward.
