The surge in law firms collecting, analyzing and visualizing information aims quite understandably to increase firm revenue. Why, managing partners ask, should we invest the time and money to do predictive analytics (aka machine learning), if we don’t expect to hear the cash register ring? That relatively short-term goal of increased fees makes sense. It also orients the progressive firms to focus analytic tools that pertain to substantive legal analyses.
Even so, this article argues that a number of benefits of predictive data analytics should be recognized in the domain of law firm operational management. All of the alternative exploitations of data ultimately bear on the financial success of the law firm, but they are less immediately instrumental than, say, analyzing cost drivers of lawsuits to make more money on fixed-fee arrangements. As much as managing partners want to grow or increase profitability and bring in more fees and add more lawyers, they may overlook or discount secondary uses of law firm data for running the firm as leaders focus almost exclusively on short-term, return-on-investment business development.
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