Three critical components to successfully leverage your data

As appeared on Briefing Magazine on April 18, 2024

Fully exploiting your data can have a significant impact on success. Andy Hoyt, chief technology officer at Aderant, shares a roadmap to kickstart your data journey

There’s growing recognition of the advantages of effectively leveraging data in the legal industry. With tantalising benefits, such as improved decision-making and better client service, what do firms need in place either to initiate or advance their data journeys?

Andy Hoyt, chief technology officer at Aderant, believes that leveraging data requires three key components: developing a data strategy, selecting appropriate technology and collaborating with the right partners.

Start with a data strategy

The first step in a firm’s data journey is a well-conceived, firm-wide data strategy. It should go beyond collection and storage and include harnessing data for predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, says Hoyt.

Essential factors to consider are data quality, the tools you need to mine and manage it, processes for capture and ensuring cleanliness and an agile data architecture. “It’s not just an asset, but a crucial factor in business agility to help you constantly grow and adapt to the ever-changing technology world and future applications,” adds Hoyt.

Accurate and reliable datasets enable effective use of AI and reduce the likelihood of errors and inaccuracies. Maintaining quality data also requires ongoing governance, whereby firms audit and verify data and have a system in place to manage multiple iterations of legal documents.

“Techniques such as data lineage and version control can help us track data back to its source, confirming its integrity. Quality control must continue throughout the application lifecycle,” Hoyt explains.

To make use of large datasets, firms should consider having specialised databases with vector search capabilities in their strategies, he believes. These perform more advanced operations and deal with structured and unstructured data, and they are efficient and scalable.

Unlike traditional search algorithms that rely on exact matches, vector search can arrive at the semantic meaning behind queries. Lawyers would be able to retrieve information based on contextual queries that don’t necessarily match exact keywords.

Commenting on law firms’ current data maturity in general, he notes: “There’s a small pocket of firms with good maturity that are already leveraging data for analytics, but the majority are still working out their overall strategies.” The key to progress lies in not just acknowledging the value of data but also actively developing a framework to make the most of it.

The advantages of centralising your data

A centralised solution that includes your practice management system, knowledge and resource management, and timekeeping, is also crucial for firms to leverage their data effectively, he says. “You’re just never truly going to be able to get the value or the insights from a single slice of the piece. Pulling it all together is much more productive,” he says.

Some of the advantages of aggregating data from across the firm include gaining more visibility around matters — progress and profitability, and observing what’s changing from a market perspective. Leveraging that data using AI, lawyers can easily access information at the snap of a finger, says Hoyt. However, he adds that lawyers will need ongoing prompt-engineering training to surface the desired information.

But it’s imperative to have clean data to obtain accurate results. “By providing out-of-the-box solutions, Aderant helps firms cleanse their data and enables them to bypass the complex, error-prone process of training AI systems with raw data,” he says.

The right tool for the right job

Technology supports a firm to deliver on strategic goals, and with plenty of options available all clamouring for attention, it can be hard to choose. With a technology career spanning over two decades, Hoyt says that it really boils down to “picking the right tool for the right job”. But he warns against building bespoke solutions for every need and recommends having a balanced approach that combines proprietary and commercial solutions.

“The right technology should add value to the firm’s services,” Hoyt advises, suggesting a focus on solutions that enhance the firm’s services. Whether it’s adopting cloud services like Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft Azure, or specialised legal tech platforms, the chosen technology needs to align with the firm’s data strategy and business objectives.

Finding the right partner

A reliable partner who understands the specific challenges and opportunities within the legal sector can also help to accelerate your data journey. As well as providing the solution itself, they can guide you through the intricacies of data management, ensuring security, compliance and practical insights for transforming process and outcomes, says Hoyt.

The right partner can also streamline the integration of various systems into a unified data strategy, providing resources for data analysis, AI applications and much more.

Most importantly, he adds, this partner will provide customisable solutions — flexibility is key as firm needs evolve over time — and will work with other providers to help you cleanse and unify your data.

Unlocking the full potential of a firm’s data assets is a collaborative effort which requires a reliable partner, delivering the right technology to meet your goals, which in turn demands a comprehensive data strategy that recognises its worth.