Now more than ever, legal departments are dealing with a plethora of data—around matters handled, rates paid, and much more. But not all legal departments have that data sorted in a clear, visual way that makes it usable for decision-making.

The use of dashboards is an increasingly popular way for legal operations teams to organize data. But every company trying to implement these tools does so a little bit differently.

“The reason everybody is chasing dashboards is we are swimming in data,” said Scott Fuller, director of legal operations for Santa Clara, California-based Applied Materials Inc. “The dashboards provide a very effective way to determine or create what people call actionable insights. You want to use the data to inform and drive decision-making. [Dashboards] are very visual, so it makes it easy to see relationships in the data.”

Applied Materials' legal department chose the DIY route to dashboards, an effort that started about a year ago. Before that, the department had plenty of data, but lacked ways to make sense of it. The company has been creating its own dashboards for about a year, Fuller said, with programs manager Archana Kiri leading the charge.

The creation of multiple dashboards using Tableau was a success, and it helped the department make more informed decisions. Both Fuller and Kiri will be speaking about their experiences at next month's Corporate Legal Operations Consortium conference in Las Vegas.

For those new to this area, Kiri gave a talk about “Dashboards 101,” offering tips to departments thinking of building their own.

“Start with the problem statement—what are you trying to measure, what do you want from the data? And from there on it becomes kind of clear,” Kiri said. She added it's necessary to have clean data and to reach out to others at the company, especially IT, which can help in the beginning of the process.

Creating the first dashboards can be the hardest part, she said, and after that the learning curve becomes easier. Since her first dashboard, which focused on fiscal data drawn from e-billing, Kiri's been asked to make many more. 

The company's GC loved the first one, Fuller said, and soon even more legal department members wanted their own dashboards, with a focus on data that was relevant to them.

“It takes a long time to do the first one, but once you've done one, they start popping up like popcorn,” Fuller said. 

The Applied Materials legal department has now created dashboards around a whole slew of metrics including legal expenses and in-house expenses as percentage of revenue, late billing by firm and investigation cycle times.

Applied Materials chose to create its own dashboards because the option provided through its e-billing system wasn't compatible with the company's unusual fiscal calendar, and it was hard to find an outside tool that aligned with their year. The company is large enough to have the resources and IT department often necessary to start and maintain successful dashboards.

But for smaller legal departments that don't have the time or resources to spend months (or even years) on dashboard development and maintenance, it can make more sense to use customized analytic software from a third party, said Kevin Clem, the managing director and leader of the law department consulting practice for HBR Consulting, which operates the dashboard Counsel Command.

Though small to medium-sized companies are more likely to go the outside vendor route, he's also worked with a number of large companies' legal departments that want organized, visual data but do not want employees using their time to create and maintain dashboards.

“It runs the gamut from those who have already tried dashboards and are looking for an advanced solution that is more sustainable, and those who realize they've got the data but they want insight, and haven't thought about how to use this data to create insights and report out through the rest of the company,” Clem said. 

His team starts with a baseline set of metrics that can be individualized for each department, depending on what's most important to the company. Individual users may also see different data when logging on—the GC and the director of legal ops rely on different metrics to make daily decisions, and that's reflected in the dashboard.

“Focus on what decision or what insight that dashboard should provide or answer,” Clem said. “Don't expect senior attorneys to go into a tool everyday unless there's some specific action you're expecting them to take, or a question they're looking for an answer for. Think about if someone is looking to get on the phone with a law firm, what would you want them to know?”