Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | I N F O R M A T I O N G O V E R N E N C E 16 The themes of Infonomics are extremely relevant in today's legal environment. After reading up on the topic, I couldn't help but think about how to apply some of the ideas, especially those around information management, to law firms. As Mark Cohen recently pointed out in an article in Forbes 3 , ". . . Law—like so many industries—is undergoing a tectonic shift. It is morphing from a lawyer dominated, practice-centric, labor-intensive guild to a tech-enabled, process and data-driven, multi-disciplinary global industry." For law firms, the ability to harness their data will be key to surviving and growing their firms. Following the principles of Infonomics, in addition to calculating the value of their less impactful assets like computers and office furniture, they should also be figuring out a way to audit the value of their copious amounts of information and looking for ways to increase its returns for the firm. Prioritizing Information Management Firms have long recognized that information about client relationships, data about work the firm has done, who within the firm has which expertise and the myriad contracts, research memos and other work product documents are the lifeblood of winning and better serving clients. Documents probably come closest to being managed like an asset at firms, but there is a huge amount of rich structured siloed data that is still often treated as a second-class citizen. Firms that I talk with frequently struggle with data scattered across time and billing, CRM, docketing, HR, SharePoint, their website, word and excel documents and first- generation experience management applications. When tasked with pulling data from multiple systems for strategic planning, responding to an RFP, or reporting on diversity metrics, it becomes a time- consuming exercise of locating data, mapping values across systems and grappling with inconsistencies. New helpful information that is produced as part of the exercise may be stashed in new silos like spreadsheets, making it difficult to leverage for future uses. Having disorganized data not only puts firms at an operational disadvantage, but also makes it nearly impossible to leverage the data for analysis, predictive analytics and new AI initiatives. Law firms might see this as a chicken and egg problem. If firm information isn't managed well, it's difficult to monetize. However according to Laney, "A typical, almost unfailing byproduct of information monetization efforts is the improved management of information—from its data governance and data quality, to its storage and protection. Once your organization realizes and communicates the economic benefits of any given information asset, attitudes about and attention to its care and feeding will improve significantly." 4 Putting a Value on Information Infonomics asserts that in order to put a value on data it must be capable of being monetized in some way, whether direct or indirect. Given many of the restrictions governing the use of data and work product, law firms are just beginning to identify opportunities for direct monetization. An example of this might be packaging up deal terms and providing the data to clients on a subscription basis so they can see what is market. In this case, the subscription fee would be a direct way to tie income to data. Some firms are already selling solutions that provide clients with data-driven insights on business-related issues based on the firm's previous work. Indirect ways that structured data can impact the bottom line at law firms, and thus be assigned a monetary value include: • Time saved in locating information for pitches, expertise to staff a matter and awards and rankings submissions, not to mention finding documents and work product. • Incremental win rates due to responding quickly with more accurate and complete information. • Increased client loyalty (less expensive to retain current clients than convert new prospects). • Quantifiable impact of new service offerings identified through data analysis. See the ILTA 2018 Marketing Technolo White Paper for an example. W H A T I F W E M A N A G E D D A T A L I K E A T R U E E C O N O M I C A S S E T ?

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