By Stephanie Fox, Senior Director, Client Experience, LegalMation
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear people talk about “legal analytics” or “litigation analytics”? Did you think of gaining insights into judges, courts, and lawyers based off docket entries, published opinions, and other publicly available court documents? If so, you are not alone. That is the most common interpretation of those phrases and they do provide a certain level of understanding about your litigation matters. While analytics based on publicly available legal data has been around for years now, it only provides a part of the story. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of filed cases result in a publicly disclosed outcome in the form of a trial verdict (or other dispositive court ruling) or announced settlement. The outcomes for the rest of the cases hide below the surface, behind law firms’ and corporations’ firewalls. If you are trying to truly understand the impact of your organization’s behaviors, strategies, and decisions on matter outcomes, you must also fully explore your organization’s own internal data.
We hear it all the time…an organization has loads of data at its fingertips but no way to really understand what information that data contains. So, where can you find a system that can extract the necessary information from your litigation matter data and map it to a detailed classification system to power your organization’s case strategies?
Unlike the public records that drive currently available litigation analytics, LegalMation’s Data Analytics combines its proprietary classification reports – which provide three (3) levels of case information – with your own billing records and case outcomes (usually in the form of settlement agreements) to provide you with deep insights into your firm’s or corporation’s own internal litigation data. With this combination of information, you can learn from your organization’s litigation history to develop strategies and budgets in ways that were not possible before.
For example, have you ever wished you had proof that a particular adversary was causing you to spend far more time and money on their cases than usual? Have you been trying to establish that you need to take a different approach with those counsel that repeatedly sue your company or your client? Have you ever wanted to know which cases are posing the most risk to your organization? LegalMation Data Analytics can quickly and easily provide insight into these and countless other questions that you have always thought were impossible to answer. By looking at how much the cases settled for, what the firm was paid for the work done on the cases, and the strength of the adversary, we can give you an idea of just how risky a particular attorney or claim can be for your organization. You can also get different perspectives by filtering the data based on the litigation classification system we have developed.
For GCs and inside counsel, would you like to have insight into your outside counsel’s performance to make more informed decisions on case assignments? LegalMation’s Data Analytics lets you compare your outside attorneys to see who is resolving cases with the highest settlement amounts yet taking the longest time to bring the matters to a conclusion. You can use these insights to determine which attorneys are most efficient, effective, and providing you the best value for the services they are delivering.
Based on the combination of data sets we use, we can even help a firm create an accurate Request for Proposal (RFP) and assist corporations in making better assessments of submitted RFPs. Using the three (3) data sets mentioned above (classification report, billing records, and case outcomes), we can show you how much time is being spent on each phase of litigation so you know what to request if you’re the one pitching for business or understand if a request is reasonable when you’ve received a pitch.
Last but not least, we’re working on ways to pull in the public records data so that you can get a true 360o view of your cases. Ultimately, you will be able to see your internal data and the public external data all in one place.
In a recent article, legal tech blogger, Ron Friedmann, said, “LegalMation’s ability to characterize matters and lawyer work means that legal professionals can now model how decisions about case strategy affect outcomes. In-house counsel, legal operations professionals, and law firm partners who manage portfolios of related litigation should be all over this. Done properly, it will improve case strategy, and for in-house lawyers, selection of outside counsel. We could even develop best practices for legal strategies.” (https://prismlegal.com/taking-legal-analytics-to-the-next-level/) We look forward to helping law firms and corporations achieve this level of control over their own internal litigation data.
What do you think of this approach? What questions would you want to answer using your organization’s own data? Drop me a line at stephanie.fox@legalmation.com and let me know.
