Storytelling Through Legal Analytics

In-House Legal Department leaders understand that legal analytics are critical for effective decision-making. However, the overwhelming and time-consuming nature of data analysis – from collection, through visualization and analysis, and into actionable storytelling – often limit their ability to fully utilize its power.  

Looking at a chart is one part of the legal analytics puzzle - drawing observations, insights and conclusions from it is the next (and arguably most important) step.

With Xakia's ProReports, General Counsel and other legal leaders can automate the generation and delivery of insights derived from legal data, translating the data and allowing them to move immediately to strategic initiatives that maximize the impact of their legal teams.

What are the key stories General Counsel and in-house legal leadership need to tell stakeholders?

1. How is the Legal Team delivering on its work?
2. How is the Legal Team prioritizing its work?
3. How is the Legal Team resourcing its work?

Legal analytics story #1: How is the Legal Team delivering on its work?

Using legal data to tell the story about your delivery must include details about:

• Volume - incoming requests, outgoing work and outstanding balance
• Clients - who is requesting the work
• Focus - proportion of work delivered that is both high priority and strategically important

But the story must go deeper: how has the legal work and its delivery changed over time? How does delivery of operational work compare with strategic or high priority work? How do each of these sit in context with the other? Can you immediately identify pockets of work that are laying dormant for long periods of time?

When these stories are told, it becomes clear to stakeholders that the Legal Team delivers its work efficiently and effectively within the context of its overall workload.

Legal analytics story #2: How is the Legal Team prioritizing its work?

Telling a story about how the Legal Team prioritizes its work includes understanding that work in context - what proportion of the work is operational vs. strategic, low vs. high complexity, lower risk vs. higher risk.

Once understood, insights can dig into details about prioritization (when it gets actioned), time dedication (time spent in 'active' mode), on-time delivery and turnaround times to highlight changes in metrics from one period to the next.

These insights will outline the story that the Legal Team appropriately understands what it needs to prioritize in order to focus resources on the most impactful questions and solutions: strategically valuable and high risk matter management.

Legal analytics story #3: How is the Legal Team resourcing its work?

One of the great conundrums for in-house legal leadership is how to maximize use of their (often limited) resources: matching the right legal resource to the right sort of matter.

At a high level, resourcing options include internal (junior vs. senior) lawyers, external lawyers, automation and low/no-touch software tools.

Understanding how each of these resourcing groups are being deployed across the body of work - and how it compares to other resourcing options - will help to identify opportunities for more appropriate utilization, facilitating the 'do more with less' challenge for in-house legal teams.

Over time, these automated legal data analytics will tell the story of shifting resources, increasing bodies of work without the need for higher headcount, or increased external resourcing costs. Higher automation will facilitate self-service tools and this will be evidenced in the automated insights outlined in the ProReports. 

Legal Data Analytics and Storytelling ...

Stories are so powerful! Automated insights and commentary will immediately highlight to stakeholders the work being done by the Legal Team - the delivery, prioritization and resourcing of important and impactful work, showcasing the value delivered to its organization. 

Whether you are a team of 2 or 20, Xakia's simple, powerful and affordable in-house legal matter management software allows you to capture, visualize and automate storytelling with ProReports.

Get powerful reports with in-house legal software

To learn more about Xakia's in-house matter management and legal analytics software - purpose built for teams of 2 to 20 - and how it can help you manage your small legal department, get in touch with the team today for a demo OR start your free 14-day trial here.