Many organisations are hiring data managers to oversee the process and make sure the right data is entered in the first place, and that the right things are then happening to it, however we all have a responsibility to collect, manipulate and translate data.

While lawyers are said to be more comfortable with words rather than numbers you don’t have to be a statistical expert to understand what the numbers are saying. As a recent brain food podcast from Pinsent Masons explained, we don’t need to fear the numbers and lawyers already have the skills to ask the right questions.

Having good data disciplines is essential. You need to understand not only the data you have but also the data that is missing and develop a strategy to collect this data and to do so consistently. Legal teams shouldn’t be doing this in isolation as that can lead to duplication, inconsistencies or missed opportunities to access data that exists elsewhere.

Using data to impact decision-making is becoming increasingly vital. Understanding the work undertaken in-house and what goes to external advisers and the cost of doing so, can help inform capacity and budget requirements. GCs can make decisions on how work is allocated by classifying legal requests, tracking time to serve, assessing risk and cost of delivery.

By understanding and analysing parts of a process that take longest, lean thinking can be applied to redesign processes and remove wasteful activities. Implementing automated tools or assigning tasks elsewhere can bring performance improvements and free up senior lawyer time for other activities.

A collective approach to good data management can have a positive impact on the bottom line. Legal teams working with procurement and business teams on a contract life-cycle process can shorten timescales leading to faster access to revenue. For example, a common understanding of the commercial and legal risks in a proposed contract and how these reflect the reality of what the market is willing to accept can help focus attention on those areas that carry most risk.

It is not just the hard commercial data points that need to be understood. ESG and diversity and inclusion factors also need to be measured. Understanding your supply chain and reporting on, for example, diversity statistics are very relevant today. While an organisation might have corporate statistics, how these apply to a specific client relationship, or even at a project level, is becoming increasingly important.

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Solving challenges with legal data analysis requires a collaborative effort between lawyers, legal operations teams and legal technology providers. Agreeing on what needs to be measured and doing so with consistent terms can bring clarity, support better integration between disparate systems and help understand project life cycles.

Working with data scientists to bring advanced data modelling techniques will help collect, distil and review more complex data while also avoiding the pitfalls of data misinterpretation.

Wherever you are on your data journey, you likely still have a way to go yet. Bringing data governance to support strategic intelligence is a continual process, requires a mindset shift, involves data analysis techniques and strong collaboration.

Mike McGlinchey is head of consulting and technology for Pinsent Masons Vario.