CTRL's 2018 Survey - Analytics Becomes "Indispensable" for Corporate Legal

It's been really interesting to see how a seemingly futuristic trend like the use of analytics within the legal community has materialized right before our eyes. I'm excited to present CTRL's findings from the third year of our in-house analytics survey, which reveal unmistakable traction ...

Introduction

Gartner, a leading research firm, claims that emerging technologies must go through phases before they are truly ready for large scale adoption. Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” starts with an Innovation Trigger, progresses to the Peak of Inflated Expectations and then moves to the Trough of Disillusionment – all before eventually progressing to mainstream usage. In 2017, Gartner notes that Artificial Intelligence (or “AI Everywhere”) has evolved enough that this group of technologies (including the subset of machine learning) will start delivering meaningful, competitive differentiation.

“AI technologies will be the most disruptive class of technologies over the next 10 years due to radical computational power, near-endless amounts of data and unprecedented advances in deep neural networks. These will enable organizations with AI technologies to harness data in order to adapt to new situations and solve problems that no one has ever encountered previously.”

Simultaneously, as corporations look to drive efficiencies across their operations, they are attempting to take more control of their internal processes, particularly legal matters. In lieu of deploying more personnel, the more common and savvy response is the greater use of technology tools.

These converging trends are borne out by the results from the 3rd Annual Analytics Survey conducted by the Coalition of Technology Resources for Lawyers (CTRL). CTRL partnered with The Information Governance Initiative (IGI) to survey corporate counsel to determine how they use data analytics in eDiscovery, Information Governance (IG), and other disciplines. In the survey, CTRL asked broad questions about the importance of technology and specific questions about analytics use cases and spending levels.

Analytics Are “Indispensable”

Now in its third year, CTRL’s Analytics Survey reveals unmistakable traction in the broader adoption of analytics. The overwhelming majority of respondents agree that data analytics will be “will be very important, will be considered indispensable, and [their] use will be widespread” among the legal profession over the next 10 years.

As in past years, analytics in eDiscovery continues to lead the way with “95% of practitioners indicating that their spending in this area will grow or stay level.”  Additionally, three times as many organizations indicate they will "start using analytics for eDiscovery in the next 12 months.”

Other ancillary analytics use cases continue to show dramatic year-over-year increased usage rates as well, with massive growth in Outcome Analysis (up 42%), Information Governance (up 78%), and Contract Review (up 146%).

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