Silver Circle Law Firm
Design + Data Engineering
2023
If you talk to people at law firms, they'll tell you about all the great and innovative ideas they have: fixed pricing, better work allocation, data-driven strategy. But they're stuck. Why? Because there's very little information captured and structured about the cases they work on - most of what they capture is simple accounting and billing data. Without a contextual layer of information, much of the innovation they want to see is simply not feasible.
They needed a huge new database. But it was so much more than that. We had to understand what to data to capture, how to structure it, and how to ensure continuous collection, automatically and at scale. A hard challenge. The type that we really enjoy.
We thought deeply for a long time about what the future legal practice should look like, with a focus on the software, algorithms and automation that'd help lawyers minimise time spent on non-billable work. The exercise was worthwhile - it became clear and obvious the type of data a legal practice would have to capture in order to evolve.
Mocking up tons of little apps gave clarity to where time is wasted and the benefit that could be generated
With the end state defined, focus turned to the ontology and taxonomy of legal procedure
Database built, we then needed to engineer a smart system that'd ensure consistent data collection
Legal data is understandably quite sensitive, so we built an API with a strict permissions structure
Sometimes the simple things are the most impactful. Definitely the case here. With a huge new database and over 800,000 data points, the firm was able to fuel new innovation. They naturally started to do all the things they'd been wanting to do for years.
New insights just popped out, like a work type that consistently made 250% of the average fees
It's now easy to quantify competitive advantages, like the % of a claim saved for defendant clients
With mountains of historical data, it's now both faster and easier to provide reliable price estimates
Everyone knows more; everyone now knows the price difference between a sole v panel arbitration
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