Analytics has frequently been touted as among the next big technologies in legal technology, and a recent report indicates that the technology is taking hold.

The Coalition of Technology Resources for Lawyers' (CTRL) third annual Analytics Report, which took accounts from a survey of attorneys and legal department professionals, found that analytics is likely to “be considered indispensable” and “will be widespread” among the legal profession over the next 10 years,

Dean Gonsowski, founder and executive director at CTRL, said “70 or so” people were polled, and that all were in-house legal professionals. Respondents were equally taken from small (under 500 employees), midsized (500 to 5,000) and large (over 5,001) organizations.

The report cited e-discovery as the arena in which analytics was most often applied, with 95 percent of practitioners reporting spend will either “grow or stay level” in the coming year. Data culling, ECA and privilege review were the most popular use cases for analytics.

But the technology is moving beyond its usual home in e-discovery. The survey found a 43 percent increase in use of analytics for outcome analysis, which attempts to predict how a judge in a particular district will rule on certain litigation.

“People need to see that [these use cases are] being done, they need to see it in the litigation,” Gonsowski said. “That allows them to open their minds in ways around the possibilities.”

Another area gaining steam in analytics is outside counsel selection. While the usage rate reported in 2018 has stagnated (15 percent among in house counsel), there was a 200 percent increase in organizations reporting that spending for this would increase over the next 12 months.

As to why spend stagnated while a massive spending hike was predicted, Gonsowski said, “With the corporate cycle, you're going to see people that are thinking a year ahead.” He added that “you'll see a lot of folks kick the tires with analytics in a lot of use cases” while building it into the following year's budget.

Among those currently using analytics for outside counsel selection, 77 percent used it for evaluating billing rates, while 88 percent used it for performance.

“Corporate legal is a cost center, and typically not perceived as a value-add,” said Phil Favro, director of legal education and resources at CTRL. Analytics for billing rate and performance, he said, “provides a number of leverages in terms of getting your cost metrics on the right level.”

As to analytics' efficiency for these ends, Favro said it's on “a case by case” basis, though noted that results are useful for litigants who are in court over and over again. “This use is critical to being able to assess where we could economize, and where we could add value instead of being a cost center.”

The report also noted a 146 percent increase in contract analytics from the previous year. The most common applications were “evaluating existing contracts,” which saw a 15 percent increase from 2017, and “evaluation during negotiations,” which increased by 39 percent.