Finalists: Ashurst; Gowling WLG

Norton Rose Fulbright's ambitions to harness 'big data' won it the Knowledge Management Innovation award for developing a cloud-based court intelligence database (CID) as a way to keep tabs on current trends in banking litigation.

By comprehensively tracking claims, the firm can gain insight on new trends, developing practice areas, the tactics of competitors and the activities of clients — knowledge that has traditionally been cobbled together through gossip, rumour and scattergun investigation, the firm says.

While this information is publicly available, Norton Rose Fulbright recognised that nobody else was collecting and structuring it in a usable way.

The CID system allows users to search banking litigation active in English courts sorted by party names, acting law firms, type of claim and stage of proceedings.

As of March 2016, around 150 cases were being tracked on the database, with more added each week. The firm says the database is currently only available to its lawyers but adds that it could be rolled out externally and expanded to other areas of litigation.

It could also later incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities. "Addresses a key pain point for firms and clients, and deploys sensible, bottom-up strategies to tackle it. I wish I had access to this," a judge commented.

Click here to return to the full list of winners.