Everything You Should Know About Data-Driven Litigation
on Topics: Guest Posts
This article is a featured guest post from Ben Michael, Texas attorney and Founder of Michael & Associates.
Everything about the law is established and decided upon in relation to precedent. Lawyers, prosecutors, and judges—everyone in the legal profession—consider precedent essential in evaluating cases, making decisions, and getting an inference.
Modern methods, however, have proven how data-driven models can be effective decision-making tools and resources instead of legal professionals relying on precedent alone.
“Did this happen before? What was the decision based on? Was it in the law, or did it violate any constitution?” is a precedent. But what if specific data don’t necessarily align with what happened in the past?
Precedent, in all matters of fact, is also based on data. So legal professionals must learn how to look beyond the judgment of the precedent and see the underlying data behind it.
Examples of data-driven business models
According to the European Company Lawyer’s Association, legal teams can successfully deliver success in the courtroom and the firm by adapting data-driven business models. In this case, it means the recognition of the importance of:
- The role of data
- Focusing on the business model as the central design level
The paper discussed three main types of business models, including data users, data suppliers, and data facilitators. In this case, legal professionals should fall into the data user type as users who can benefit from the “actual use of data” to:
- Create internal value within the firm by improving internal processes based on data to:
- Learn how and where to spend time for value-adding activities within the firm
- Satisfy clients
- Examine data to make informed decisions and plans
- Set financial budget and goals
- Create external value by offering legal services fully backed by facts, data, and evidence.
In fact, being data-driven isn’t something only the legal firm benefits from. We can find the use of legal data even in the financial sector, where they could have access to legal data to make informed business decisions, like when appointing a new Board of Directors or taking in a new supplier.
Good data vs. bad data
If we are driving data-driven litigation into the limelight, it is important to recognize how data will benefit or harm the decision-making process and the law firm as a whole.
Good data is one that must be relevant in terms of context and timing. A data-driven legal team leverages legal data to make informed decisions. Bad data, on the other hand, is one that is misleading, not fit for a purpose, and causes misunderstandings and confusion rather than adding value.
According to Anthony Martin, CEO and Founder of Choice Mutual, “Deciding whether information or data is beneficial ultimately lies with a person’s discernment of all the facts and context of a case. All data are created the same, but they are not always treated equally.”
The role of data in legal services
Case-oriented
The role of data in the legal profession helps create informed litigation decisions. As a matter of fact, data-driven litigation is being pushed as the new benchmark and a groundbreaking opportunity for legal professionals to utilize historical and present data to present facts and come up with court rulings.
Historically, lawyers have relied on predictions and personal judgments to try a case. According to Forbes, data democratization can change this practice. With data democratization, data is made widely accessible to make data-driven decisions, which holds true for the legal profession. For one, accessible court record data help close the justice gap among underrepresented individuals.
If lawyers, judges, and prosecutors can make decisions based on a wide array of available data, why not utilize them to their full potential? Indeed, it’s a much better and more reliable metric than an “it depends” or “the precedent says” approach.
Litigation analytics also comes into play for the case-oriented role of data. According to Thomson Reuters, litigation analytics are research tools that deliver data-driven information concerning judges, courts, disputes, law firms, and attorneys, their impact on past case decisions, and how to deal with present cases based on trends and patterns appearing on the analytics.
Operational: As a means to improve law firm services
Data-driven legal firm practices can also significantly improve firm performance in terms of time and financial management, improved client experience, and increased revenue. At the same time, legal data and legal tech are essential to keep a law firm competitive and profitable, primarily through strategic planning and as a marketing tool.
According to Mark Pierce, CEO of Colorado LLC Attorney, “The use of data to recognize and address areas that need improvement in a law firm is an important tool all law firms across the country must consider. There are opportunities to grow in terms of personnel and time management, as well as revenue growth, at every corner when data is utilized properly.”
Benefits of making informed decisions through data
Understanding opponents
When a lawyer undertakes cases, data-driven focus allows lawyers to use data to understand the behavior, patterns, and thoughts of an opponent or a counterparty.
For example, a lawyer going against another lawyer in court may want to focus on their opponents’ previously handled cases, their history on these cases, the patterns of their behavior, and the rulings made to grasp their working style to their advantage.
Early assessment of cases
Early case assessment, or ECA, allows legal professionals to use only “relevant” or good data. When an early assessment is made, the chances of unnecessary workflow and irrelevant data are lessened so that lawyers can focus only on what really matters.
Through the use of data, lawyers can assess early on whether to go to a trial or suggest an amicable settlement with the opposing party.
Early case assessment differs for every lawyer in terms of scope. Nonetheless, using data for ECA greatly benefits all parties involved in terms of effort spent and financial burden, especially in the early stages of a case.
Leveraging data to mitigate risk
After assessing the facts of a case through data, lawyers can use this data to mitigate the risks involved through preventive law. According to Sage Publications, preventive law and risk management go hand in hand—that knowledge of precedent, constitutional compliance, and public information mitigates risks and legal ramifications.
This means that legal professionals can foresee legal challenges, evaluate legal merits, and consider policies affected by those challenges and the necessary actions to these challenges and merits.
Benefits of being a data-driven law firm
Planning ahead
For law firms, business operation is highly dependent on how far law firm owners think of their business in terms of financial and operational stability.
By being data-driven as a law firm, you can easily review and examine historical financial data, client trends, and client behavior to plan which seasons of the month to lessen expenses and create budgets where client inflow is expectedly less than normal.
Gain insight into value-adding activities
Historical data helps law firms evaluate which of their operational activities are value-adding and which aren’t.
For example, here are some non-value-adding activities that law firms might be silently suffering from and eating away at their productivity and money:
- Waiting times
- Unnecessary processes
- Unnecessary inventory use
- Unsatisfactory client services
- Unnecessary manpower
Profitability
A business gains more revenue when it knows how to save and generate more sales. Through data, firm owners can better look through cost reduction strategies like:
- Managing travel and representation costs
- Investing in technology
- Reducing unnecessary labor
- Reducing office material expenses
- Manage overhead costs
Better client services
A law firm can offer better client services when it knows where it lacks and needs improvement. Through data acquired from client behavior, client information, and feedback, law firms can identify where past clients have found the firm to be underperforming and the reasons for such feedback.
How to achieve success through a data-driven business model in the legal field
Using data strategy
While a data democratization approach says that data should be made available for anyone who wishes to access it, that is far from reality. The law heavily pushes data protection from those who wish to abuse it.
With data strategy, legal firms or organizational legal departments should consider which data should or should not be used, the limitations and access for every type of data, and its impact on a firm’s decision-making processes.
Maintaining data security and integrity
In today’s digital world, much of the data acquired is kept and maintained digitally, either through cloud services or personal servers.
This is where data security and data integrity comes in. Data security is not to be confused with data integrity, however, because while data security revolves around data protection, data integrity is concerned with its trustworthiness.
The more we rely on data-driven methods, the more we must ensure that the data we acquire and maintain are trustworthy and free from external threats.
Is being data-driven the future of the legal field?
The existence of legal data engineers and legal data specialists to design and implement technology in legal processes proves that legal tech is changing how the legal industry operates. By being data-driven, legal professionals make informed decision-making through retrospective investigation of data of cases and business operations.
When precedent and good data are used hand in hand, legal professionals will find themselves with a more historical and evidence-backed way of thinking, combined with technical professional knowledge and years of experience.
The data-driven model is not the legal field’s future because it has always been and will continue to do so as technological and digital advancements evolve.
Guest Author Bio
Ben Michael is a highly acclaimed lawyer and founder of Michael & Associates, a leading law firm specializing in criminal defense. He is known for his exceptional legal expertise, astute business acumen and deep commitment to serving his clients with the utmost professionalism and integrity. He is passionate about helping individuals and businesses navigate the complex world of law and is dedicated to providing innovative solutions that meet their unique needs and goals.