Legal analytics

Pie charts are great. But deeper insights and compelling visuals can be gained by leveraging more advanced platforms.  

At the "Picture This: Data Visualization for Lawyers" session of the ABA TechShow 2020 conference in Chicago, Intapp's strategic research senior manager Jennifer Roberts and University of Wisconsin Law School law library public services assistant director Kris Turner offered some best practices to help law firms present and organize their data.

From better understanding a practice group's revenue-generation to forecasting if your firm is losing work to ALSPs or in-house services, Roberts and Turner said the benefits of deeper data analysis are endless. Below are highlights of some of their best tips:

Obtaining The Data

The important first step to data visualization is obtaining the data. Along with the firm's internal data, law firms can also leverage public data provided by Google Datasets' research search engine, government databases and analytics from Westlaw, Lexis and a host of other databases.

For firms that fear their law firm-generated data is "dirty," Roberts and Turner recommended continually validating data to confirm a presentation is accurate.

Understanding Your Data

Before creating a "storytelling" data presentation, a data visualization tool can allow law firms to first understand what is perhaps driving results or challenges at their firm, Roberts noted.

She described the levels of analytics powered by data visualization as a descriptive current view of the firm, with potential diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive insights.

Such insights can be gained simply by leveraging chart-making tools to find potential similarities in seemingly dissimilar client groups or client opportunities.

Finding the Right Platform

Most law firms are aware of Microsoft Excel and its chart-making abilities. While Roberts and Turner agreed that platform is useful for easily spotting trends and progress, they said Excel is largely useful primarily for internal use.

When showcasing data-driven statistics or outlooks to clients or the general public, the panelists suggested firms leverage free platforms Venngage, Timeline JS, Infogr.am, and Piktochart to create eye-catching infographics. 

The panelists also recommend leveraging Tableau's premium version, because it can sit on top of a firm's CRM, billing or any system to create adaptive and sophisticated data presentations. 

"It produces a little more sophisticated visualization, branding and coloring. It can also create dashboards that update on an ongoing basis" Roberts said. While Excel is a manual effort, Roberts added.