What type of financial/data analysis is used in the legal department?
Holton: I am pretty sure we can do virtually any analysis that any smart financial analyst can dream up. The key is to effectively prioritize both the human and system resources performing the work. Through experimentation, as well as trial and error, we tend to focus on those few analyses that enable us to design and support meaningful performance metrics, both for our assessment of internal performance and for reviewing outside counsel. We use management dashboards that describe our spend at a macro level (overall spending by categories/lawyers/firms) and a micro level (matter-specific). In addition, we capture time/trend data to enable us to spot trends sooner rather than later and better predict our future spend. And since we have been at this for a couple of years now, we have more complete and reliable data. Harrison: Why are these analyses performed? Holton: In my experience, effective data mining and reporting unlock the door to transparency, management, and control of legal sp
