Probably the most fertile ground for the use of legal business analytics relates to predicting costs for litigation matters. It can be done, within reason. The concept makes sense— e-billing has been around for a long time, there is much available data, why not use it?
Predictability of outside spending is a top law department pain point, as is controlling costs. Analytics can help predict and manage three components of spending: billing rates, staffing and productivity. The most common is billing rates, but the combination of the three can lead to cost prediction.
