Impact of Big Data Analytics on Legal Industry

Introduction-

The importance of big data is soaring. Each day, the profound impact of data analytics can be felt across myriad domains of digital services – courtesy endless stream of information they generate. Yet, a handful number of people actually ponders over how big data is influencing society’s some of the most important professions, including legal. In this blog, we are going to dig into how big data is impacting the legal profession and transforming the dreary judiciary landscape across the globe.

Across every industry, big data is being used to guide and develop better decision-making and business insights. However, its use in the legal industry is relatively new, mainly due to skeptics in the industry and willingness to spend on new technology being quite low.

Many law firms are reluctant because they have dirty data – data that is incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated. This leads to low confidence in data and the ability of big data to deliver ROI in law firms. Regardless of what condition the data is in, it is worthless without the resources to pull insights from it.

Funnily enough, most law firms believe that big data and its assistance in decision making is important especially when it comes to managing tasks like client terms. 90% of firms believe that big data is important, but only 16% are using it. This presents a gap in the market where costs to implement analytics technology are falling and data collection technologies are becoming more effective. It is now more accessible for law firms to improve their business model, exceed client expectations and increase profitability.

Importance of Big data for Lawyers & Attorneys

Information is challenging our legal frameworks. Though technology has transformed lives 360-degree, most of the country’s bigwigs and institutions are still clueless about how to harness the power of big data technology and reap significant benefits. The men in power remain baffled about the role of data. The information age is frantic and the recent court cases highlight that the Supreme Court is facing a tough time taming the big data.

Data Analysis is rapidly taking hold in various industries as a method of making more accurate, objective measurements and gaining valuable insight into the true nature of any human-driven system.

As with many technological advances, the legal industry has been slow to keep up compared with others. This is partly down to the fact that attorneys tend to be risk-averse, and partly to do with the nature of legal data.  As long as the legal practice has been around modern technology simply adds more practicality. In the past, lawyers would spend hours studying books of court records to painstakingly qualify every relevant case for a client.

Today, legal case data is digitally recorded, which makes it more easily accessible.

Big Data Transforming Legal Research

Biggest of all, big data is transforming the intricacies of the legal profession by altering the ways how scholars research and analyze court proceedings. For example, big data is used to study the Supreme Court’s arguments and we have discovered that arguments are becoming more and more peculiar in their own ways.

Such research tactics will largely lead the show as big data technology tends to become cheaper and more widely popular across the market. In the near future, big data is going to be applied in a plethora of industry verticals and we are quite excited to witness impactful results.

Conclusion

When you think of the legal industry you think of money, overtime, and lots of paperwork. Big data can play a role in case of management for lawyers. Cases are filed every day in South Africa and each case requires a mountain of paperwork behind it. Big data can help organize this and improve the customer journey when dealing with the firm. In addition to this, Big Data is helping law firms with time management and billing. This includes a deeper understanding of revenue streams, the most profitable case types and teams better suited to cases to ensure maximum output.

The legal industry will fall behind if it doesn’t step up to the big data plate. In current times, clients expect more from their law firms and will leave if they do not feel empowered. Clients and firms that embrace technology will drive big data evolution in the legal industry.