A new white paper by Legatics explores how legal tech tools not only provide a useful efficiency gain, e.g. in helping to close transactions, but can collect huge amounts of useful data that in itself has tremendous value – perhaps as much as the tool itself – to the law firms.
As they say: ‘Every deal your lawyers run contains data that reveals which clients are slipping away to competitors, where you’re mis-pricing work, and how to free up your partners to win more business. The firms that lead in the next decade won’t just be those with the best lawyers – they’ll be the ones that saw gold where others saw paperwork.’
I.e. a deal closing tool is used by lawyers to support a matter, but in doing so it connects with operational data: who worked on the matter, pricing, hours and profits; and legal data: what is market now, key clauses in the contracts, key sticking points in closing the deal. And more.
And for AL, that then raises the question as to whether the legal tech tool eventually has the same value as the data it provides?
And Daniel Porus, CCO at Legatics, and AL will be sharing a video discussion next week talking about this very subject.
The report also illustrates this evolution in thinking and peer company moves, via the graphic above.
A parallel elsewhere in the market is how Litera has evolved, which started with point solutions, and bought deal tool Doxly – see chart – and then rapidly increased its focus on data (along with many other acquisitions). Then using the various tools it had assembled not just to perform specific tasks, but to assemble a wide range of data that has value to law firms, it built out a new strategy. In short, the aim has been to build a data ecosystem via the deployment of multiple point solutions offered up as part of a platform.
AL is also reminded of the point often made about Facebook. People were excited to use the platform when it first arrived, but the real value was in the data. The advertisers got to steer ads to the right people based on the information they’d collected, and users of the platform got to read what they wanted to see. Of course, when it comes to influence campaigns that’s not always good…..but, the central point here is that the thing of greatest value is the data. And in this case that data is going to be kept by the law firm – and just for their own use.
I.e. Think of this as running your own internal Facebook, with the ‘ad data’ used solely by you to help improve how you work.
You can find more about Legatics here.
And you can read the full report on this subject here.
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Legal Innovators California Conference, San Francisco, June 11 + 12
If you’re interested in the cutting edge of legal AI and innovation – and where we are all heading – then come along to Legal Innovators California, in San Francisco, June 11 and 12, where speakers from the leading law firms, inhouse teams, and tech companies will be sharing their insights and experiences as to what is really happening and where we are all heading.
We already have an incredible roster of companies to hear from. This includes: Legora, Harvey, StructureFlow, Ivo, Flatiron Law Group, PointOne, Centari, LexisNexis, eBrevia, Legatics, Knowable, Draftwise, newcode.AI, Riskaway, Aracor, SimpleClosure and more.
See you all there!
More information and tickets here.