Corporate law departments are not only starting to deploy legal analytics with more frequency, they're also leveraging the technology against increasingly complex tasks, according to a new survey by HBR Consulting.

Launched during last week's Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) institute in Las Vegas, the survey was conducted over a period stretching from December 2018 to January 2019 and incorporates responses from senior legal professionals working in corporate law departments spread across 32 U.S. companies. One key takeaway? Analytics are advancing up the corporate agenda.

“Not only is [analytics] on the radars, but it's moved up to the point where it's a high priority or kind of in the top set of priorities. … It's something that we think is pretty compelling,” said Andrew Baker, senior director at HBR Consulting.

Compelling and statistically accurate, at least according to HBR's survey. The large portion of respondents, 41 percent, categorized data science and analytics as a “medium priority,” while 38 percent identified as being in the early planning stages. As for the two extremes, 16 percent of respondents called data science and analytics as a “high priority,” while only 6 percent said it was “not a priority.”

Baker posited several theories as to why analytics may be bounding up the ladder, ranging from the sophistication of the tools now available to the general wealth of data resting at a company's fingertips. Still, while more companies may be engaging with analytics, they're not all doing it at the same level or even with the same goal in mind. Baker alluded to a general progression in ambition that emerges as law departments start to become more comfortable with data and analytics.

“We think it's natural for those that kind of get in, orient themselves, find the right use cases and build up some of that muscle memory to continue to advance and go after bigger things,” Baker said.

Case in point, HBR's survey breaks respondents down into two types of user groups. The “Data Experienced” crowd, which use analytics for diagnostic, predictive, or prescriptive purposes, made up 47 percent of the survey, while the “Data Exploring” category, which focused on foundational or descriptive analytics, accounted for the remaining 53 percent of respondents.

As one might expect, Data Experienced respondents appear more likely to apply analytics towards future high-complexity projects. For example, 40 percent of these respondents indicated that in the near future, they would use analytics when reviewing contracts or related risk, as opposed to only 35 percent of the Data Exploring group.

Still, the use of high-complexity analytics tools that can do things like predict dispute outcomes or evaluate outside counsel's substantive performance looks to be on the verge of increasing across the board. While 41 percent of all survey respondents indicated that they were currently using high-complexity analytics, 63 percent indicated that they would be doing so in the future.

It's not like the incentive isn't there. Baker thinks the opportunity to deploy complex analytics exists within most companies. Even businesses with no immediate need or budget for complex data tools could have one or two areas of risk that warrant some kind of investment.

“Whatever that might be for you: labor deployment, product liability, IP. Whatever your hot spot is or the thing that's a byproduct of what you do as a company, that might be an area where you kind of double down and try to go deeper into analytics,” Baker said.