Ropes & Gray on Wednesday unveiled a new consulting service aimed at marrying data analytics and behavioral science to the firm's legal advisory work on risk management.

The firm has brought on board former Pfizer head of global compliance monitoring, analytics and digital Zach Coseglia to lead the new R&G Insights Lab alongside existing partners Amanda Raad and Will Rosen.

The team aims to help clients make sense of past outcomes so they can ensure that strategies being directed towards regulatory compliance, culture review or investment decisions—to cite several examples—are effective.

"I'd been watching, time after time, clients get frustrated with the amount of time, energy and resources they were pouring into particular challenges," said Raad, who is also global co-leader of the firm's anti-corruption and international risk practice. "The same problems kept reoccurring. And when there were opportunities, they were not hitting the same mark they were trying to hit."

She added that regulators, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority, have been pushing for companies to make greater use of data in their compliance activities.

"Historically, a company hires a law firm to do the risk assessment and investigation. They look at the data, come up with findings and recommendations, and the company goes to try to implement them," Raad said. "But you have a gap. By the time they're implemented, the data has shifted again. Regulators are saying, 'This is an ongoing responsibility, not just a snapshot of time.'"

For Coseglia, his experience as a buyer of legal services for the last seven years illustrates the value in having a law firm offer data-driven recommendations alongside traditional legal advice. He listed compliance and risk management as the foremost example to illustrate how these pieces fit together.

"It's a space where we continue to see teams spend a disproportionate amount of time on what they're doing and whether those investments and activities are worth doing," he said. 

By having data scientists share conclusions with lawyers, it's possible to make sense of past patterns while also introducing an awareness of regulatory requirements, as the data doesn't live in a vacuum.

"We want to develop actionable insight that leads back to the legal team to figure out what the work plan looks like," Coseglia explained. "What opportunities there are to make a program better based on what the data is telling us."

Coseglia said that after his time in-house at Pfizer, including several years in China, spent transforming investigations work and introducing a more analytical approach, he was looking for a new challenge. While he considered starting his own outfit, he decided it made sense to do so within a law firm. And it happened that he had a longstanding relationship with Raad.

In addition to Coseglia, Raad and Rosen, R&G Insights Lab will be supported by two geographic leads each for three regions: the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia. It will also rely on an outside network of contributors including the U.K. social purpose company Behavioural Insights Team, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes and risk management software provider Lextegrity.

The move is not Ropes & Gray's first foray into the consulting arena. The firm also has a benefits consulting group involved in the design and implementation of corporate benefits programs.