Five Ways to Differentiate Your Firm With Legal Technology
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Clients are pressuring law firms not only to cut costs but also to change the value proposition for delivering legal services. They want more productivity for their dollars and actionable intelligence that differentiates a firm from the competition.
The key question, then, is how can you best achieve this? How can law firms provide critical insights, comprehensive business knowledge, and data-driven strategy in a way that differentiates them from other firms vying for a company’s business?
There are two possible answers: you can do more than your competitors or you can do it better than your competitors. With the right tools at your disposal, there is a third option: you can do both – and that’s where technology comes in.
Let’s take a look at five ways technology can reshape the economics, productivity, and service quality of your law firm.
1. Deliver fast and thorough case law research with the help of AI
Incorporating AI technology into legal practice is no longer an unknown new frontier. It’s today’s reality and, more importantly, clients have come to expect it from the firms they employ.
What’s more, the rapid development and accessibility of AI have led some experts to posit that it won’t be long before a failure to understand and use AI could be considered a lack of competent representation.
By using tools that employ advanced AI techniques, attorneys can gather insights from large sets of data and focus on the information that matters most, enabling them to be more efficient and strategic, and offer more value to their clients.
Although attorneys may never feel completely confident in their research, they can sleep easier knowing that their research tools are employing technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to help them find that needle in the haystack they are looking for.
Artificial intelligence can accelerate legal research time, discover things the human eye would miss, and help produce better results. Search engines powered by machine learning can sift through massive volumes of documents to find the right information in a fraction of the time it would take a human.
Brief Analyzer automatically identifies and evaluates cited legal authorities and delivers a detailed brief analysis with suggested content for further review.
Bloomberg Law offers AI-powered legal research tools such as:
Points of Law enabling attorneys to quickly find language critical to a court’s reasoning to support their legal arguments.
Docket Key helping attorneys find an on-point brief, sample motion, or precedent material with only a few clicks.
Brief Analyzer drastically reducing the time spent analyzing a legal brief, identifying relevant authorities, and preparing a credible response.
Smart Code is a virtual annotated code applying machine learning to research state and federal codes, rules, and regulations to quickly identify the strongest and most useful case extracts.
“Brief Analyzer is a huge timesaver. The ability to pull additional cases and statutes that can bolster the argument in my brief in that easy-to-view way is a no-brainer.”
Senior Associate, Robinson & Cole LLP
2. Make data-driven litigation decisions
Today’s litigators are expected to make well-informed decisions, develop strong strategies, and get a big-picture perspective – all without time on their side. Sustaining the necessary research effort can be very time-consuming. There’s just so much flux, so many facets to address and so many materials to curate. How can they keep up? What might they be missing?
To stand out among the competition, they need access to fast, accurate, and focused information to help:
- Evaluate the totality of client and prospect litigation portfolios by examining their outside counsel, involvement in certain case types, and choice of litigation venues
- Get fast access to information on all sitting federal district court judges – their profiles, past work and current cases, cited opinions, decisions by motion outcomes, appeal outcomes, length of case, appearances, and case type
- Understand how certain motions and appeals resolved and the relationships among parties, law firms, and areas of law so they can better predict outcomes, timing, and case costs
- Assess litigation activity by practice area, volume of cases, and significant clients to size up the competition, benchmark their firm, and identify opportunities
Bloomberg Law Litigation Analytics enables attorneys to search millions of legal data points by company, law firm, or judge to help predict possible outcomes and inform litigation strategy.
Here are four ways to search:
Search by law firm
The law firm search analyzes more than 7,000 law firms and the companies they represent in federal court. See the entirety of a law firm’s case portfolio and sort by company, case type, date range, litigation history, and jurisdiction.
Search by attorney
Quickly see if an adversary or firm has appeared before a particular judge. It also makes it possible to conduct competitive research on opposing counsel to better anticipate what litigation against them will look like.
Search by judge
The judge search provides fast access to information on all sitting federal district court judges – including the number of appearances by law firm. Drill down further by clicking through to those dockets to learn more about the filings and outcomes.
Understand the judge’s tendency to grant or deny motions, review the outcomes of appeals of the judge’s decisions, and see how long cases generally take before this judge. This helps to better predict outcomes, timing, and case costs.
Search by outcome
Bloomberg Law’s Docket Resolution classification system is another innovative solution to help develop a winning litigation strategy. It uses AI to identify the ultimate outcome for closed federal district court dockets. Upon detecting that a case has been marked closed, a deep learning model reads over the entries of federal district court civil dockets and, from the data presented on the docket sheet, assigns each case one of seven categories of outcomes. If a settlement has been noted in a docket sheet, a notice is published that a settlement has been detected in the case.
[Learn how our integrated, time-saving litigation research tools allow litigators to streamline their work and get answers quickly.]
“Bloomberg Law’s Litigation Intelligence Center is a game changer in the areas of docketing and judicial intelligence. Instead of having to search in multiple areas, this service enables attorneys to get necessary information in one place – and with the confidence that they have not missed anything.”
Partner, AmLaw 200 firm
3. Support a productive and efficient team
To differentiate a firm, its attorneys need to be able to practice and advise clients immediately, without losing time on training, research, and administrative tasks. Both imperatives call for greater operating efficiency, without overworking attorneys and risking burnout.
An attorney’s efficiency, productivity, and profitability are directly tied to being able to access resources that guide and inform them and make the whole process look effortless with their clients.
The ability to easily and cost-effectively access expert guidance across multiple disciplines and for varying levels of legal sophistication has never been more important. The manner, method, and solution with which you obtain this critical content can have an undeniable impact on a firm’s bottom line.
Legal guidance and support every step of the way
Bloomberg Law’s Practical Guidance is how-to content authored by expert attorneys, enabling users to understand a task, manage it from beginning to end, and advise quickly. It serves the needs of every level of practitioner, from the new associate getting up to speed to the seasoned practitioner expanding into new areas of practice or supervising a work team.
Practical Guidance offerings are integrated with all other aspects of Bloomberg Law, such as Chart Builders, Precedent Database of documents and clauses, news, laws and regulations, and analytics.
The array of practitioner tools includes analytic applications, Chart Builders, and Practical Guidance – overviews, checklists, sample forms and agreements, timelines, drafting and negotiating guides, and more – tailored to a wide range of practice areas.
The materials are consistent in format and organization across practice areas, with enhanced search functionality for easy access and rapid research. With these resources, firms can ensure that everybody is following consistent best practices – a key ingredient in service differentiation.
Practical Guidance provides step-by-step guides, including checklists, sample forms, agreements, and more.
Improve efficiency in transactional law
Draft Analyzer is Bloomberg Law’s proprietary tool that uses AI to improve the process of drafting, reviewing, and negotiating merger agreements by:
- Speeding up document navigation and review
- Comparing your text to market-standard language
- Delivering practice tools and relevant expert guidance at the attorney’s point of need
Draft Analyzer uses an algorithm to identify the developing consensus among drafters based on its analysis of each paragraph from virtually every agreement and organizational document filed as an EDGAR exhibit. Our system first categorizes each paragraph based on textual similarity and constructs one or more unified versions (“composites”) for each identified cluster of similarly worded paragraphs. A composite reflects the common language in each cluster’s underlying paragraphs.
“Time is money for a lawyer nowadays and the more you can do to avoid reinventing the wheel every time you get a matter, the better off you’re going to be.”
Ed Brandwein, Head Librarian, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler
4. Identify and target new business opportunities
Today’s businesses demand more of their outside counsel. We’re talking about a deep understanding that generates contextual legal advice specifically tailored to the needs of an individual client. Having access to optimal resources can be a game changer, because corporate clients value outside firms that can get up to speed on the company’s business on the firm’s own time and the firm’s own dime.
With Bloomberg Law, data from thousands of resources are made searchable and meaningful through smart filters and analytics. Being able to pinpoint areas of interest – such as possible regulatory investigations, sales or mergers, bankruptcies, rumors, negative news, or dockets – allows attorneys to quickly gain a deeper knowledge of trends and challenges a client faces.
Bloomberg Law Dockets delivers complete coverage of all federal courts, expansive coverage of state courts, rapid alerts, and powerful search technology.
This better positions attorneys to provide legal advice that’s not just correct, but contextualized and business-focused, and therefore more valuable to clients.
Technology fuels business development by helping:
- Build deeper relationships with existing clients
- More effectively identify opportunities with clients
- Craft stronger pitches for both existing and prospective clients
The ability to deliver meaningful legal advice – that is grounded in practical business realities and also effectively anticipates issues on the horizon – is one of the most significant ways a law firm can distinguish itself from the ranks of the many, elevating a firm to a company’s trusted, go-to legal advisor.
“One of the most helpful things about Bloomberg Law, in terms of attracting new clients, is the docket alert feature. … If I’m alerted to a new lawsuit filed against a company that I represent or a company at which I may have an introduction, I can alert them to that filing within hours of its hitting the public network.”
Jeremy Glenn, Partner, Cozen O’Connor
5. Stay on top of market issues that affect the firm, its clients, and its competition
No matter the practice area, staying ahead of the latest developments is always key to success. Whether looking for the impact of new IRS guidance or how to minimize litigation risks in return-to-work programs, Bloomberg Law’s news coverage delivers up-to-the-minute news from primary sources, coupled with secondary analysis by legal experts. By tapping into industry expertise from practicing attorneys, users can provide proactive counsel with complete, nuanced understanding.
With customizable news alerts you get timely, relevant, and concise legal news and industry developments. Bloomberg Law newsletters are offered for each of our 40+ news channels. They are updated regularly and include highlights of the latest developments.
Get additional insights through news offerings, such as:
- News from the Bloomberg Terminal (75,000 news sources)
- Bloomberg Businessweek
- Bloomberg Briefs
- Bloomberg Law Insights
Bloomberg Law also offers current and archived ALM Media News, including market-recognized titles such as Corporate Counsel and The American Lawyer, and leading state legal sources.
[See how we deliver the tools to streamline your work and get the answers you need, quickly. Request a demo of Bloomberg Law.]
“I rely heavily on the news from the Bloomberg Terminal. If I need to search for a company or a person, then I search those specific fields in the search template, which is really the strength of a Bloomberg news search. I set up news alerts regularly, which is an invaluable feature.”
Evelyn Tan, Knowledge Management Staff Attorney, Sheppard Mullin