Using Data to Better Understand Contracts: A Q&A With LawGeex's Lucy Endel Bassli
Lucy Endel Bassli talks about how she fell into operations, data analytics and the kind of data she wants to extract from contracts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
October 11, 2018 at 02:07 PM
4 minute read
As an attorney specializing in contracts, Lucy Endel Bassli wanted to find a way to look for patterns in contracts. After realizing that she could better see the outcomes of contracts by collecting data from past contracts, she's found the decision-making process in constructing and negotiating contracts. Bassli, who is the chief legal strategist at LawGeex and the founder and principal of InnoLegal Services, recently authored a chapter on legal operations and data analytics in “Legal Operations: How to Do It and Why It Matters,” an e-book published by Juro.
Bassli spoke to Corporate Counsel about how she fell into operations, data analytics and the kind of data she wants to extract from contracts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Corporate Counsel: How did you first become involved in legal operations?
Bassli: I am a commercial transactions attorney and I do a lot of contracts. Because I would have to work on a lot of contracts, I wanted to find a way to do more with less. I kind of fell into optimizing resources and changing the people that do the work and automation. I then realized that this is an operation. I started applying that a little bit more broadly, so it was kind of by accident.
The chapter you wrote in the e-book is specifically about data analytics to bolster a legal operations function. From your perspective, how do you define data analytics?
It can really be any part of legal operations and my example is around contracting and using data to drive decisions. The area of contracting is not a naturally intuitive place to use data. In an area like spend management, of course, data is very black and white. Whereas with contracting, it feels very legal. What I believe developed in my work is understanding how many contracts end in a certain way, and how many contracts look a certain way. That kind of data helped me make substantive legal decisions in the end about the context within the contracts.
Are you using any kind of technology to collect this data from the contracts?
I use technology to help collect the data and to help visualize the data, but there really isn't any piece of technology that I love more than another. It wasn't the technology that drove that operational result. It was more changing the combination of which people I use and how I outsource.
How do you prioritize the data after you pull it all together?
I start with the basics to figure out the volume of work. I look at how many contracts, and then I would like to know which types of contracts I'm dealing with; I start with the basics. Then I look at the negotiations of the contracts and which provisions within the contract were negotiated the most. Further, I would like to know what are the substantive changes that were made in those negotiations to those provisions? Did they end up in very common or similar places, so to speak? Meaning, if you wanted California to govern your contract and nine times out of 10 you would have to negotiate that if the other side wanted it governed in a different state. Is there some majority that always ended up being the obvious answer. Does it end up in Delaware most of the time? Did it end up equally in New York? That kind of data is informative because it helps inform what my beginning position is in that contract.
What is the timing on decision-making in contracts now that you're using data analytics?
It can be pretty instant. If I get a piece of data that tells me “x number of contracts came from Kazakhstan” and at the same time I'll have an email in my inbox that says people on the ground in Kazakhstan want a localized part of the contract in their language. That data point tells me that we have zero contracts in Kazakhstan so we're probably not going to allocate resources to the local translation efforts. That decision then can be pretty immediate.
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