Data analytics allowed BDO Canada’s Christina Porretta to sway leadership into beefing up personnel

Data-analytic processes can provide several benefits to legal departments. First, data analytics helps to enhance decision-making. By leveraging data-driven insights, legal professionals can make more informed decisions leading to better outcomes.

One way of doing this is to use predictive analytics to help arrive at strategic decisions more quickly, thereby increasing efficiency.

Second, we can use data analytics to observe types of low-risk work that we see over and over and can introduce automation to help us with. Legal professionals can reduce workloads and increase efficiency by automating certain tasks. An example would be using an automation tool for non-disclosure agreement review.

Third, data analytics help to identify patterns and trends. For example, on the contract-review side, if we see that we are getting a high volume of requests from a certain group within the business, then we would identify why we are getting so many requests and try to work in some efficiencies to reduce the workload. It could be pre-approval of certain terms, use of templates and other self-service tools such as playbooks and FAQs.

What are some of the best practices for a legal team to harness the true power of data and analytics to optimize decision-making?

Our firm values using data to make informed decisions. So, I prioritize capturing all data and analytics for our department. When shared with leadership, it can be really powerful to argue for things like an increase in headcount or improvement to certain processes.

We started to identify all the data available to our legal department a couple of years ago. Any phone call or email that came our way, we would start tracking it. This would include data on how many contracts we are being asked to review every day and how long it takes.

It would also include litigation metrics – tracking the lifespan of our litigation files, including type of claim, amount of the claim, external counsel retained and stage of the litigation.

The data also provide metrics relating to our privacy program and metrics relating to the frequency of third-party document requests, which are often time intensive.

The goal is to track this data and use it differently. For one example, I used this data to justify an increase in headcount for the in-house legal team.

Another reason was to demonstrate a business case for introducing processes, including a new process around contract review.

On the dispute side, data can help us better predict future behaviour and resolve certain types of disputes early, even before they go into litigation, which saves time and money.

What are some methods of leveraging technology to monitor and enhance team performance?

When I started at BDO, I got the legal department on a cloud-based document management system. Not only was this hugely important for the team while everyone was working remotely, but becoming a paperless department was the right thing to do as part of our firm's sustainability effort.

With our team on a cloud-based system, all our legal professionals have access to everything anyone is working on at any time. This means we don't have to search in other systems for documents or emails. If someone is away, you can pick up where they left off. This saves huge amounts of time.

It's important to use data to track what the team is working on and then identify ways to improve efficiencies.

One thing that is top of mind for me is monitoring the type of work being done on my team and by whom. I want the senior lawyers to work on more complex contracts and larger litigation matters. Whereas the more junior lawyers and other legal professionals can work on appropriate work for their level.

This was an issue I had a couple of years ago when the team was much smaller. I had one lawyer for each area of law we deal with, and they were doing it all.

Collecting the data on the type of work we did, which showed how busy the department was, allowed me to hire the appropriate number of team members. I want everyone on my team to feel fulfilled in what they're doing, which hopefully leads to a happier, more productive team and therefore enhances their performance.

In addition, identifying certain work that the legal team does that would benefit from automation is another way to leverage technology to enhance team performance.

If certain legal tasks are automated, this will free up time. With more time for strategic work, they will be more engaged, leading to better performance.

What is the role of litigation analytics in making informed risk-based litigation decisions?

One of the primary purposes of litigation analytics is using it for predictive purposes, mainly to make future decisions.

It allows us to identify patterns and trends – perhaps we see similar types of complaints or claims on certain kinds of engagements – so we can advise our risk department so that they can include that data in their engagement acceptance process.

Another purpose is to assist in risk mitigation. Litigation analytics help us measure what happened and why. We can use this information to get ahead of issues and work with the applicable stakeholders in the business to implement controls to prevent the same problem from arising again.

How has your team at BDO used data analytics to boost productivity and provide better services?

Our biggest project this year is to overhaul our contract review process to decrease the workload for legal professionals and increase efficiencies for the business.

We have two years’ worth of data and can identify what is required to implement a new process. This will include self-service models, such as templates, playbooks, and training and automating how contract review requests come to the legal team.

On the dispute resolution and regulatory side, we used the data to inform the areas requiring risk mitigation. We identify where we see continuous risk or a pattern of behaviour and then work with leadership and the partners to get ahead of the issues.

We do this in a variety of ways. One, speaking at various internal conferences to educate about the risks and how we can mitigate those risks. Two, emailing internal thought pieces to the partners about reoccurring issues and how to mitigate those risks. Three, meeting with leaders regularly to discuss lessons learned in their respective service lines and ways to prevent certain issues from arising again.

The goal is to get ahead of issues by identifying past risks and providing education around those risks to help the business understand the why behind what we're doing and implement controls to prevent the risks from happening again.

By doing so, hopefully, we can mitigate future risks, which would reduce some of the day-to-day work that comes across our desks that could have been prevented.

It also helps us cultivate relationships, which ultimately provide for better service.

*Answers have been edited for length and clarity.