Raw data from practice management and billing systems is extremely useful, but firms can also leverage routine tools to glean helpful analytics to enhance productivity, the panel  at the ABA TechShow 2020′s "Buried Treasure: Hidden Analytic Tools in Your Practice" session argued.

On Thursday, attorney and Open Legal Services co-founder Shantelle Argyle and Docket Reminder CEO David McNeill discussed how practice management and billing systems, common tools, and evaluations can work in tandem to provide data-driven analytics to bolster a firm's productivity and revenue.

Argyle described how her firm examined phone traffic data to determine what days of the week and time of the day the firm mostly received phone calls from prospective or current clients. Browsing Google Trends regarding a firm's practice group or regulations that impact a practice can also forecast an uptick in client interest, she added.

Tracking clients that declined to hire the firm is also helpful, she said. Following up with those missed client opportunities with questions garners useful "anecdotal data that is just as useful as data in our systems," McNeill explained. That way, law firms gain an understanding of the reasoning why a prospective client declined to hire the firm, Argyle added.

Argyle also described a risk assessment tool her firm implemented to determine if a client was high-risk. If the potential client was determined to be high risk her firm wouldn't take the case to avoid the complicated issues their data said was likely. Fueling those prediction tools are the firm's raw data from proprietary practice management and time systems, which is essential to assembling a data center to uncover the amount of legal matters being handled, a matter's status, collection rate and other insights, the panelists said.

That data is key to preventing a "zombie case," which McNeil described as "cases that have no activity for an amount of time." Firms can utilize a real-time dashboard to track the status of lawyers' cases.

Additionally, a dashboard allows firm leaders to spot potentially burnt-out lawyers who are struggling with their caseload, Argyle noted. Early intervention could prevent lawyers from quitting and avoiding potential missed deadlines and other mishaps.

For Argyle, she said she knows firsthand how data analytics spurs predictability regarding pricing legal services. She said her firm, which serves mostly low-income clientele, obtained a 98% collection rate because they were able to leverage their data system to determine the likely billable hours for a specific case type. In turn, they required a retainer to match the likelihood of the amount of time that matter would take.