Introduction to Data Analytics: Practical Applications

“Data analytics” has become a ubiquitous term in today’s vernacular—in the news, in marketing materials, and everyday conversation. The term can be used to describe a broad array of ways that organizations make data-driven decisions to improve performance: health care providers improve patient care, couriers get goods to our homes more efficiently, and email providers screen spam from our mailboxes. The applications are endless.

Data analytics is also changing the practice of law. The discovery process – one of the largest expenses in litigation – involves examining large data volumes and complex databases for key facts, which can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Add increasing pressure from clients to contain legal spend, plus mitigating the risk of missing important information or inadvertently producing privileged or confidential documents, and it is more important than ever to be able to efficiently organize and review data, automate processes whenever possible, surface key facts quickly, and reuse work product.

Data analytics allows for all of that and more. It can also influence other areas of law, including cybersecurity and incident response, internal investigations, due diligence, and even transactional work such as contract management.

In this program, our panel of attorneys and technologists will explore:

• The various types of data analytics available to lawyers and legal teams;
• How attorneys can leverage early case assessment (ECA) and early data assessment (EDA) to control costs and better define case strategy;
• Courts’ acceptance of the use of analytics by parties in litigation; and
• Other legal data analytics use cases, including data culling, custodial validation, sentiment analysis, contract management, data remediation, sensitive data governance, and more.
  

Panelists:

• Tom Thompson, Principal, Thompson Legal LLC
• Sean Byrne, Founder, Calibrate Advisors
• Debbie Reynolds, Director, EimerStahl Discovery Solutions, LLC
• Martin Tully, Partner, Actuate Law LLC
• Doug Kaminski, Managing Director, CobrATX