For example, results from the 2020 Legal Analytics Study by ALM Intelligence and LexisNexis showed 70% of law departments and law firms had access to legal analytics, up from only 38% in 2017. Looking deeper into those results, I noted two main — and I should note, external — drivers that accelerated the adoption rate: competitive pressures and client expectations.

Eric Falkenberry, a partner at DLA Piper who manages litigation risk through data mining, litigation analytics and predictive modeling, said his goal is to provide clients an analytically-created knowledge base. He explained this could create a new revenue stream for a law firm by selling clients a tool, so the client doesn’t have to pay the law firm for low-level work.

Falkenberry also mentioned that there’s no evidence that dragging a case on results in a better outcome, yet that’s often what happens when companies think they can get more money. Instead, analytics can provide credible historical evidence about judges’ decisions or settlement dollars and a firm can use data to show that certain cases which took three years had the same result as a case that only took one year. Therefore, the efficiencies that law firms were very afraid of for a long time because of the billable hour, they are now embracing due to efficiency and cost savings.

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