By Autumn Callan | Practice Area Specialist, Lex Machina
Large law firms began adopting data analytics years ago as part of their evolution toward the construction of more professional marketing and business development organizations. These tools surface important insights by extracting information from internal data (e.g., billing, time tracking and client lifecycles) and industry data (e.g., news coverage about potential clients and competitors).
Meanwhile, another category of data analytics is emerging as a powerful driver of marketing strategy and tactics to help law firms win new business.
Litigation Analytics and B.D.
Litigation analytics refers to the process of analyzing data related to past cases and legal proceedings to help inform and guide decision-making. This data is often spread across multiple sources, including case law, court records and dockets, regulatory content and public records.
Litigators and law firm leaders have embraced these data tools so quickly that they have essentially become “table stakes” for litigation, according to a 2024 survey by Lex Machina. But while litigation analytics are widely understood to be crucial resources for the practice of law, more firms are embracing litigation analytics to drive their business development efforts as well.
4 Use Cases to Win New Business
Here are four specific ways that litigation analytics can be used to improve law firm business development and drive revenue growth:
- Client Prospecting
The search for new clients can be complicated and competitive, but litigation analytics help law firms cut straight to the most lucrative business opportunities. Analytics enable firms to identify parties in open litigation across different venues and receive alerts on newly filed cases. This provides the first-mover advantage for a firm to connect with in-house counsel on those matters and share their relevant capabilities.
- Appellate Opportunities
Litigation analytics can be used to find cases in which large damage awards have been handed down by judges or juries at the trial level, either based on filters such as a case type or a specific jurisdiction in which the firm has experience. These insights provide firms with an opener for engaging with the in-house counsel and introducing themselves to the company for a potential appellate engagement.
- Showcase Experience
In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, it is important for law firms to craft winning pitch decks that creatively illustrate their superior capabilities for handling a new case. Litigation analytics can surface data that demonstrates the firm’s proven success in similar matters, shows advance knowledge of the judge’s past rulings, and highlights the firm’s experience in the venue. These data analytics can be converted into compelling data visualizations for firm-branded pitch decks or proposals.
- Lateral Recruitment
For better or worse, successful law firm business development is often connected to the number of top revenue-generating partners in the firm. That is what makes lawyers with established books of business and loyal client followings so highly sought after by law firms, particularly those that are looking to drive revenues in key office locations or target practice areas. Litigation analytics can surface important insights regarding individual lawyers who have the most active practices in certain high-value target areas or who work frequently with specific clients of special interest.
The Pioneer in Litigation Analytics
Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company, pioneered the category of legal analytics, combining data and software with individual attorney review to provide law firms with a winning edge in the highly competitive business and practice of law. Every day, the database engine scans millions of pages of litigation information to create valuable insights on courts, judges, law firms, lawyers, and litigation parties.
Lex Machina’s mission is to bring legal analytics to all areas of the law by combining its advanced technology platform with the world-class content of LexisNexis. To learn more about how Lex Machina turns litigation data into actionable insights that help law firms win more business, watch a brief video and then request a free product demonstration.