Data is powerful. It is potent when used with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that continually gather and evaluate information and provide insightful learning and predictive assessment. Instead of relying on anecdotal and remembered information, lawyers can use data and AI to make more refined judgments that benefit the people they represent and their practice. Together, data and AI can serve as invaluable tools for lawyers constantly weighing the risks and opportunities of different cases. Here are just a few ways data and AI can Drastically change your strategy and how you make decisions.
How to Connect with More Clients
Repeat business is challenging for personal injury lawyers and others representing clients for specific cases. You must constantly seek out new clients with valid claims who need your expertise. Finding these clients is very time-consuming and expensive, producing mixed returns. While referrals and advertising are critical supplemental methods for bringing in new business, they don’t consistently deliver results. New marketing technologies tap into data pools and use AI to analyze that data. The combination makes it faster and easier for individuals with potential clients to assess the validity of their claims and connect with the right lawyer for their needs. The result is improving the experience for consumers, allowing lawyers to spend less time searching for clients and new cases and more time servicing their existing ones.
56% of law firms believe AI will become mainstream in law practices within the next five years.
How to Run Your Business More Efficiently and Effectively
At small firms and solo practices, resources are often in short supply. They are devoted to your existing cases, and your attention focuses on the details of those and your strategies for winning them in court. With the correct data at your disposal, you can expand your perspective and get a broader overview that reveals what’s working well and what needs to be improved. You can track and assess the variables in each case. What is most likely to drive an optimal result, your firm’s productivity and employee outputs in managing those variables, and the overall case results. These assessments can help you make essential decisions about staffing and allocation of resources each day to your cases and maximize your time and money for the betterment of your clients.
How to Determine Which Cases to Pursue
All lawyers rely on the experience and expertise they have amassed over time to estimate what cases to bring in and what time to spend building those cases. Data and AI can make this process more efficient and accurate. For example, emerging analytics technology can analyze data from court dockets to predict the likelihood of success of a case with specific key liability facts and injures and the expected return if the case is managed properly. With the ability to instantly see relevant drivers of case outcomes, you can make more informed decisions on your intake of cases and the budgets for those cases. This will help you better manage the human and financial resources you will need at the start to see those cases through to successful resolution.
How to Hone Your Legal Strategy
Instead of waiting to see how a case develops over time, lawyers can be much more purposeful in their approach. Data and AI tools provide vital guidance on what specific litigation steps are necessary to achieve a successful result. Using data points from past case law, win and loss rates and trends, and patterns in a judge’s history can all help you craft an approach for your cases that improves your chances of winning most efficiently and economically. This, in turn, allows you to provide better service to your clients. You can give solid evidence of why it does or does not make sense to take specific actions in pursuit of their case and the benefits that can result.
The Bottom Line
The use of data and AI technology are rapidly gaining momentum in the legal industry. According to a 2019 Thomson Reuters survey, 40% of large law firms already use such tools, and 56% believe AI will become mainstream in law practices within the next five years. Midsize and smaller firms have been adopting these technologies at a slower rate – but they are adopting. That same survey found that 23% of midsize firms (those employing 11 to 179 lawyers) and 10% of small firms are currently using AI tools to bolster their business. As more and more firms bring data and AI into play, those who don’t do so may find themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage.
