P2P

74 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 types, and transactional details, to name a few, we could reverse engineer the matter classifications for the group, bypassing self-reporting, with two exceptions. Self-reporting was limited to matters that were confidential, and therefore not part of Foundation, and a few matters that had not been profiled in Foundation yet. We developed a better process for collecting the information, but we were still stuck with a very stagnant way of displaying the information. Next, we turned to Tableau. Tableau is a data visualization tool that anyone, including a lawyer, can operate. Tableau allows you to quickly build a wide variety of interactive graphs, charts and other diagrams to display information. A user can then manipulate the data by making use of filters and parameter controls. We took all the data we collected from Foundation, including attorney hours, attorney office location and title at the firm and ran that information through Tableau. While on the surface, it looked similar to the pie charts the group had used in years past, these pie charts were interactive and with a few clicks could be manipulated to view the data in a variety of ways. For instance, the practice leader wanted to get a sense of the work completed by our European offices, a step that simply required us to use a built in location filter on our Tableau graph to show a pie chart that combined the data from both our London and Munich offices. We were able to show pie charts on the type of work completed by associates compared to partners, even down to the level of an individual associate in a specific office, all with a click of a button. We could limit the matters that showed up in the pie charts by the number of hours worked, which was especially useful when looking at data at the individual level. Our practice leader is now able to show in real time how this group's practice was evolving from year to year and make projections about the type of work that would be coming in the future. The pie charts easily reveals potential concentrations in certain types of work and can assist in strategic recruiting decisions. Our practice leader can also use the data to identify and assess opportunities for the practice. For other projects, information has to be pulled from a number of sources to create layers of data. Tableau, using data mined from an experience management platform and information from accounting, offers/provides visualization of areas where leverage is lacking and where write offs are occurring. With write off information, we can use Tableau to identify the types of matters that more frequently have associates' time written off. We can then offer targeted training and prioritize our knowledge management initiatives on identified topics through the development of position papers, checklists, precedent and forms. Prioritization of resources ultimately allows law firms to take a more surgical approach to building up their collective knowledge base to target first those areas where the impact will be greatest. This all translates to not only a better work product, but increased profitability through increasing leverage while decreasing write offs. Tableau, in connection with Foundation, allows us to visualize our data that we have been collecting for years. After the success of our pie chart experiment, we moved on to Sankey diagrams. For anyone not familiar with Sankey diagrams - which prior to working with Tableau I had never heard of - picture the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," when John Nash has strings connecting all the different "data points" running through his mind. Sankey diagrams essentially are charts that display flows, or relationships between two or more sets of data. Our use case was wanting to identify concentrations in work flow, from associates working too much with one or two partners, to evaluating the relationships – both in the number of hours and frequency of matters- that associates worked with specific lawyers. We utilized Sankey diagrams to display strengths of relationships between two attorneys. The wider the line connecting the attorneys the stronger the relationship in terms of hours worked and/or number of matters worked on together. This was incredibly valuable to practice leaders for a variety of reasons, including ensuring associates were developing the right amount of internal relationships with partners to better position them to one day be self-sustaining partners, to making sure enough associates and partners were familiar with certain types of work so that if a partner or associate left the firm, the group as a whole could continue to successfully work in that space. Tableau allows firms to address a number of problems with relative ease. For example, training is an incredibly complex process that evolves as associates become more senior. What a first year associate needs in training is vastly different than a fifth year. Tableau, with data from Foundation, can assist in visualizing the type of work associates complete at different stages of their careers. By identifying the types of matters a second year is staffed on, we can now target our F R O M T H E K M C C T

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