One of the fastest growing fields in business today is data analytics: the ability to cull through data, compile it into a usable format, make a visual display of the data, and deliver it to users so they can make informed decisions. The effective use of data analytics is changing the business world.

Data analytics in law firms is no different. It helps attorney decision makers do everything from find clients and attorneys to value and present cases effectively. But none of this is possible without the proper data center infrastructure to support it.

Infrastructure Affects How Law Firms Use Data Analytics

Having the best tools available to complete legal work is invaluable. Not having the infrastructure to support those tools makes them useless. It is the equivalent to having a powerful computer connect to the network on a 56K modem—tempting from a cost standpoint but frustrating and unproductive to a user.

The key to effective use of data analytics in law firms is understanding what is needed, how it will be used, and how to deliver the results to key players in a timely manner. IT administrators must understand the details behind the data before a suitable solution can be provided. As with any IT project, proper planning, risk assessment, and a clear understanding of users’ needs and expectations are critical to the successful implementation and execution of that project.

Data Analytics Infrastructure Elements

Data analytics can be broken down into four basic tasks:

• Collecting data from sources relevant to the goal, such as public records, email, client databases, sales records, marketing data, social media and website analytics, and surveys;
• Storing data on a platform that supports searching structured and unstructured data;
• Analyzing data using a standard or custom software solution that can link different data types and analyze it to create a useful output; and
• Using visualization software to deliver results to the firm’s management committee, administrator, or managing partner for use in making efficient, accurate decisions.

Step 1: Collecting Data for Analytics

Collecting data is arguably the easiest step of this process. However, before you begin, you must identify the firm’s goals and the data that is relevant to making decisions related to those goals. For example, if the attorneys want to use law firm data analytics to improve case assignments and billing rates, you will need to gather billing and case information. You may also need data about case types, practice areas, attorney experience levels, and so on to build a meaningful data set.

Meeting with the firm’s decision makers is crucial to developing your plan to use data analytics at your law firm. In many cases, a well-prepared IT professional can help firm partners or members articulate goals for the firm’s data analytics program.

Obviously, once firm goals are established, if all relevant data is not available, collecting that data should be the first order of business.

Step 2: Choosing a Storage Solution for Law Firm Data Analytics

The most difficult part of starting a law firm data analytics program is predicting the need for storage. IT administrators can choose from multiple approaches for firm data storage.

Firm Servers, Hard Drives, and NAS

The simplest is using firm servers or adding hard drives. While simple, this solution has the most limited expansion. As firm use of data analytics increases, the amount of data stored can grow exponentially. Other approaches to data storage include data warehouses, data lakes, and cloud-based storage solutions.

For a small firm or even a large firm beginning to venture into data analytics, information technology professionals may use several simple options like local storage with additional hard drives added to a server, a network attached storage (NAS) device, or expansion of an existing NAS. This allows the implementation of storage at a reduced cost to the infrastructure. Vendors such as Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba offer hard drives that expand storage in existing computers or servers. Local NAS devices from Buffalo, Western Digital, QNAP, and Netgear offer solutions for power users or small teams with storage capacities of up to 60TB.

Warehouses, Lakes, and Clouds

While local solutions tend to be relatively inexpensive, they are typically limited in their expansion capability. The common solution in this circumstance is a data warehouse. A typical warehouse requires a large investment into the in-house network architecture. The need to understand how many databases will interface with it, how much storage it must have, and hierarchical structure of the stored data must be considered by experienced IT professionals. Data warehouse providers include Informatica, Oracle, and Microsoft.

A data lake is a repository that stores large amounts of data in its native format, not requiring a defined structure until it is needed. While data must contain unique identifiers, metadata tags are utilized to further enable the sorting of this data. Data lake providers include Amazon, Microsoft, SAS, and IBM.

While data warehouses and data lakes both serve useful purposes, the difference between them is an important consideration. Warehouses are defined and created by a development team that predefines the structure and thus directs how the information will be used. A data lake lacks that structure. It stores all data presented to it and only finds the useful data when a search query asks for it. This requires the person constructing the query to understand what data is available and how to best access this data. BlueGranite has a helpful article explaining this critical difference in more detail.

Finally, there are cloud storage options. Cloud storage is scalable and, depending on the service, may provide a secure solution for firm data. Cloud storage vendors such as Amazon (AWS), Oracle, and Microsoft (Azure) provide storage solutions worth consideration.

Steps 3 and 4: Visualization of Law Firm Data Analytics

The final steps involve taking stored data, applying a query, and delivering the results in a visual display that makes it easy to understand. There are many software tools designed for these purposes.

Software from Microsoft, IBM, Google, and SAP are all capable of building multi-faceted queries to pull from your data lake, warehouse, or NAS and compiling the results into relevant visual depictions. The choices for querying and visualization are vast, and substantial research is necessary to ensure a match between software ability and law firm goals. Here are a few factors to consider when choosing software to analyze and visualize law firm data:

• Previous experience with the company or software;
• Cost and payment terms;
• Quality and quantity of support and updates;
• Ability of provider to streamline services;
• Customizability;
• Warranties and guarantees; and
• Availability of a trial period.

Your law firm may also need more than one solution, again, depending on firm goals.

When it comes to understanding how law firms use data analytics, knowing firm goals is only half the battle. Upper-level  management buy-in is critical. While data analysis holds enormous potential to aid accurate, effective decision making, it is not for the faint of heart. It requires not only buy-in but also the resolve to stay in. It takes IT professionals to keep the ball rolling so that upper-level support stays strong.