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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 17 The worst-case scenario is at firms where nobody raises their hand to steward enterprise data, making the task of breaking down silos and managing information as a firm-wide resource all but impossible. 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 ? • Actionable insights derived by layering in third- party data regarding competitive intelligence or statistics about outcomes in different jurisdictions and before various judges. • Mitigated risk of lost clients, cases, deals, etc. Indirect opportunities can be further broken down into operational and strategic buckets. If a firm were to manage its structured enterprise data holistically, it could gain an operational advantage every time it needed to pinpoint representative experiences and/or timekeeper expertise based on a complex set of criteria. Results can further the business of law, like to pitch a new deal, or for the practice of law, to inform strate based on prior interactions with particular courts. Possibilities for using information strategically for indirect returns are limited only by a firm's imagination, from maximizing the value of a lateral hire strate to uncovering opportunities for geographic expansion and merger evaluation. Getting Started Let's look at a few key concepts and actions for law firms that want to improve their information management as a first step to actually valuing and treating data as an asset thru the lens of the change management constructs of people, process and technolo. People Investments in law firm data analysts and data scientists who are being brought in to divine insights and opportunities from data can only be truly realized if there's a strong counterpart at the front end, leading the charge to audit, clean, normalize, aggregate and enrich the information. Law firms have long recognized the value of their intellectual property, with many firms bringing in the role of Chief Knowledge Officer to spearhead projects to help catalog, locate and leverage the core knowledge in their terabytes of unstructured data. However, who's in charge of managing the myriad sources of structured data has been less clear. Large organizations outside of legal have seen the rise of a Chief Data Officer responsible for everything from governance to maximizing information value. In some law firms, CKOs have taken the lead in helping to inventory and aggregate this data for intranet portals, data analytics and operational usage. In other firms, it's been CIOs, or in some cases it's fallen to Marketing and Business Development. The worst-case scenario is at firms where nobody raises their hand to steward enterprise data, making the task of breaking down silos and managing information as a firm-wide resource all but impossible. No matter its title or department, every firm should designate a high-level strategic information management role that's focused on ensuring data quality and completeness for the most impactful results and highest return. Process Though effective information management and monetization requires a comprehensive strate and rigorous firmwide processes beyond the scope of this article, it is helpful to think about structured data through the lens of an information supply chain 5 .

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