Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 58 BEST PRACTICES FEATURES flattening and the 10 largest Am Law 100 firms accounting for 26 percent of Am Law 100 revenue, law firms are being forced to compete for an increasingly smaller slice of the revenue pie. In such an environment, a competitive differentiator like applied data analytics can have a potent effect on a firm's profitability. In top law firms, the business development process is informed by four key characteristics. • It is highly targeted. Savvy firms understand the importance of narrowing their focus to include only the prospects and opportunities that will offer the greatest return on investment. • To ensure development efforts are aligned with the firm's business, the process at top law firms is also strategic, eliminating efforts wasted on chasing down opportunities that are a wrong fit for the firm. • Successful BD is measurable. The ability to track outcomes against specific actions and relationship data makes it possible to refine the process to produce even greater win rates down the road. • The most successful law firms track their data to identify trends and enable prediction. What underlies each of these characteristics? Data analytics. Fortunately for the majority of law firms that do not sit at the top of the food chain, any firm can use data analytics to drive revenue gains through successful business development. ANALYTICS MATURITY AND BD SUCCESS The quantity and quality of the data available for analysis varies according to a law firm's analytical maturity. The maturity levels offer increasingly more sophisticated opportunities for tracking and leveraging data to drive BD success. Except for analytically impaired firms that fly strictly by the seat of their pants, the rest, no matter where they sit on the maturity curve, are positioned to implement a plan almost immediately. Relationships: They are the lifeblood of business development (BD) and vital to the survival and growth of any organization. In BD, it is not only the relationships between individuals that matter, you also need to pay attention to the relationships between actions and outcomes. That is where data analytics comes in. Data analytics can be used to identify, characterize and quantify the network of variables related to business development opportunities and outcomes. With relationship mapping and the right analytics, you can transform your firm's relationship intelligence from an amorphous mass of big data to metrics you can use to grow your bottom line. DATA ANALYTICS AS A COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATOR With corporations reducing the size of their outside counsel panels, legal spend DATA ANALYTICS FOR PROFITABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

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