At their most fundamental, lawyers seek answers to often perplexing questions – and analytics is helping them find those answers faster and more accurately than ever before, according to chief data scientist Bennett Borden of Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. “Thus, a lawyer who is experienced in using analytics is pretty much a super hero of the information age,” he says.

Here are six questions legal analytics can help answer, ranging from those that directly affect the back office to those that deliver insights into client issues:

1. Is the law firm efficient with its time?

According to Borden, when lawyers track their work down to the tenth of a minute, it allows firms to use analytics to view who is doing what and when.

“This allows us to answer questions like, 'Are we staffing our engagements efficiently?'” he says. Analyzing attorney time entries can also help determine efficiencies of the firm's various legal products. Many practice groups within a law firm often handle the same kinds of causes of action — but how much time did they spend researching and drafting, or on meetings and phone calls?

“By understanding each phase of the process, you can begin to introduce efficiencies, which provides greater value to clients,” he explains.

2. Which practice areas are performing well — and which can be improved?

Are copyrights more efficient than litigation? Are trademarks performing better than corporate real estate? According to Duc Chu, technology innovation officer at Holland & Hart LLP, these are the types of subtleties that an analytical, fact-based approach can help address, including success rates in specific areas compared with the overall industry or other firms. Ultimately, this can become a directional driver, he adds, especially once this sort of data becomes standardized and it becomes easier for firms to compare and contrast.

3. How are we pricing and structuring our deals?

For corporate in-house law departments looking to negotiate pricing on alternative fee arrangements, legal analytics have been very effective, says Vince Vetri, director of strategic analytics and reporting for legal business solutions at Elevate Services.

“It's about how they structure deals and use historical data to get a better understanding of how they should price future matters,” he says.

The other question bundled into that is, “How does the law firm demonstrate value?” Analytics can capture data points about how different firms deliver a matter more efficiently, which makes a big impact on a client's bottom line.

4. How can we use data to understand and tell a compelling story in litigation?

Used in litigation, data analytics technology allows lawyers to interrogate structured data (such as GPS and time punch data, facility access records, website and VPN logins, social media activity, etc.) to build a map of what people of interest were doing and when they were doing it, says Aaron Crews, chief data analytics officer at Littler Mendelson. “This is powerful, as it provides context for statements or communications made, as well as actions taken,” he says. When coupled with visualization software, lawyers can use this “map” in profound ways to engage in data storytelling, he adds.

“We can literally draw out for the judge, jury or opposing side the facts as depicted by the data,” says Crews.

5. How can we discover what is relevant to a case?

Analytics is used widely in e-discovery to make document review faster, easier and more accurate, says Geoffrey Vance, a partner in Perkins Coie's litigation practice and firmwide chair of the e-discovery services and strategy practice.

“It allows us to increase the pace, and the software learns with us to understand what kind of information we're looking for,” he says. “It reduces what we have to look at to identify what's relevant, what the client is saying or doing and making decisions related to privilege.”

6. How can we predict situations that create risk for our clients?

Some of the most interesting questions that analytics can help lawyers answer are client questions, says Borden. Analyzing payroll and time records can reveal risks related to variations in pay across classes of employees or to other wage and hour risks; analyzing financial records can reveal risks related to vendor payments, especially in fraud-prone areas of the world.

“Our data science team has even developed algorithms that can detect situations where employees are at risk of committing fraud, IP theft or engaging in other forms of misconduct,” Borden says.

By embracing analytics, lawyers can discover a rich repository of data that can help them answer game-changing questions – and grow their competitive edge and client service.

Sharon Goldman has been covering B2B technology topics for over 10 years, including for publications such as CIO.com, Adweek, Digital Insurance, Shopper Marketing and DMNews.