I’ve always had a bit of scepticism regarding big data in law firms. Didn’t big data require vast quantities of data, like Los Angeles police department crime records or Google searches for flu symptoms. Even the largest law firm won’t have the volumes surely? Well you know now I’m not so sure, I think maybe I was limiting myself by what I envisaged it being used for. Huge amounts of data to spot big unseen trends.

However the recent news on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook made me think it’s more about understanding what you’re trying to do, rather than just dumping a lot of data and typing to shape it into something. Kind of make sense really, understand the problem first before throwing some tech at it!

So what was it that made me sit back and think?

Well it was reading this article in The Spectator on the use of data by Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge had a database of around 5,000 data points on 200 million Americans and combined it with the Republican Party’s own voter data to build dozens of these highly focused universes and model how ‘persuadable’ its members were. (For example, analysts discovered during the race that a preference for cars made in the US was a solid indication of a potential Trump voter). Creative types then designed specialised ads for these universes, based on the specific things they were thought to care about.

It wasn’t just Facebook it was various data sources that were available (legally), these were all combined into their universes. These universes were just groups of people, like “American moms worried about childcare who hadn’t voted before”. And it was this that was my light bulb moment, big data/data analytics in law firms could simply be groupings of clients that had specific requirements. The aim here wasn’t to understand some grand solution to predicting flu or crimes, it was simply to identify specifics and then use this data. So identify that clients that were in sector X that had contacts that also knew company Y were demanding of legal work Z, you could then target companies in this universe that had never dealt with your Z practice group. It’s a crude example but for me it made me think maybe there is something here for law firms.

I’m probably behind the curve here and you’re reading this thinking, “well duh!”. But then why’s no one filling the web with success stories? Maybe given the reaction to the use of data in the case of social media companies in the press, this targeted marketing is something to keep quiet about or maybe just nobody is doing it yet!