Should firms be mining for gold in Big Data?
It’s all about the definition we give something. Take “Big Data,” for instance. This term has so many definitions that it is difficult to say whether law firms are even dealing with it.
Catherine Monte, chief knowledge officer of Fox Rothschild, and Kimberly Stein, national manager for Enterprise Content Management Solutions at Thomson Reuters, co-authored an article in a new white paper, published by ILTA, explaining that not only is Big Data in law firms here to stay, but it will continue to proliferate.
Monte and Stein spoke with a number of C-Level legal professionals and realized that while they might not necessarily call it “Big Data,” that most every firm has an abundance of content, stored in disparate systems, often duplicative and “not always brilliantly organized.” Regardless of how Big Data is defined or whether a firm thinks it even possesses Big Data, properly organizing and analyzing in-house data can help firms identify their strengths and weaknesses, inform their business plan, and help their business grow.
The law firms of the future are learning to distinguish themselves in order to gain the competitive edge they need to succeed. Having the right tools and processes to provide the right information, to the right person, at the right time, can help firms reach critical business goals by harnessing Big Data, no matter what it’s called.
