Lexpert magazine features articles and columns on developments in legal practice management, deals and lawsuits of interest in Canada, the law and business issues of interest to legal professionals and businesses that purchase legal services.
Issue link: https://digital.carswellmedia.com/i/654684
LEXPERT MAGAZINE | APRIL 2016 61 | IN-HOUSE ADVISOR: DATA METRICS | legal analytic soware, he discovered 50 boutique firms that had never acted against his company, had experience in the com- pany's technologies and had recent success in court. Lex Machina's legal analytics platform uses natural language processing and ma- chine learning to derive patterns and in- sight from millions of bits of information. In-house counsel can use the results not only to choose and evaluate counsel but also to explain their choice to management and internal clients. e IP project has been so successful that Lex Machina is now moving into the antitrust and other areas. Byrd believes it's just a matter of time before legal analytics become even more sophisticated. "Someday savvy corporate counsel will be able to correlate litigation data with billing data to assess the effec- tiveness and efficiency of outside counsel, which will provide new ways to benchmark them against other firms," Byrd writes in Corporate Counsel. IN CANADA, the situation is different. "e US has a lot more information that's easy to query and glean," says Kathuria, who sees his role at BLG as akin to that of chief data scientist. "But having said that, there are some databases in Canada that have useful information that just needs to be mined." At least one Canadian start-up is going through the available databases with the aim of starting up a legal analytics subscrip- tion service. But it's early days domestically and it could be a while before Big Data, and certainly external Big Data, makes it to the mainstream of the Canadian legal market. Given the pace in the US, however, things may spill over the border more quickly than anticipated. In a review of US developments, Legaltech News recently called 2015 the year that Big Data became "part of our everyday vernacular." Arguably, an even stronger indication that Big Data is looming is the emergence of a New York City Band that calls itself "Big Data." It turns out that the band has a lot in common with lawyers. e group de- scribes itself as a "paranoid electronic music project from the Internet, formed out of a general distrust for technology and e Cloud (despite a growing dependence)." eir biggest hit song is "Dangerous." BENNETT BORDEN > DRINKER BIDDLE & REATH LLP Metrics have really only taken hold in the last couple of years, but since then there's been significant growth. Clients are looking for more and more of that type of information. 58.9% 28.8% 23.3% 45.2% 80.8% 20.5% 42.5% 42.5% 43.8% 16.4% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Percentage of legal spend (inside, outside and both) as a percentage of revenue and total expense Percentage of legal spend versus dispute resolution for company and business units Percentage of hours received at discounted rates Average or median bill rate by law firm for particular groups of matters Total expenses by law firm for particular types of matters Days to resolution by law firm for particular types of matters Attorney headcount per $b of revenue Total cost of outcome OR total cost of outcome vs. budgeted cost of outcome Metrics related to ethics and comliance Other WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING METRICS DO YOU TRACK? The latest law department operations survey released by the Blickstein Group found a significant increase in the use of formalized metrics and reporting programs in legal departments