Held as part of RelativityFest in Sydney recently, a panel discussion, titled: “New roles, boundless opportunities: How legal data intelligence skills chart new paths in legal”, discussed how LDI is now becoming increasingly relevant to GCs, head of legals and law firms, with leaders across multiple practice areas implementing this model.

Speakers on the session included Clayton Utz partner Owen Bourke; DLA Piper regional manager (APAC) – electronic data management Emma Young; Control Risks principal Stuart Hall; and Relativity APAC government adviser John Wallace.

The session was moderated by Relativity senior director of AI transformation and law firm strategy Cristin Traylor, who said that the profession is “at a transformative time” and that “things are moving very quickly” in terms of roles changing.

The “momentum” around data – and legal data in particular – Wallace explained, has been impacting legal roles for a number of years.

“It was around 2017, 2018, I could see this real momentum for a broader perspective on wanting to solve big data problems. I mean, we were seeing these monumental increases in productions and organisations, and certainly, ASIC, as a regulator, collected truckloads of data, and some of it they didn’t do a lot with. So, it posed this whole issue around data and governance and collecting on a needs basis rather than a wants basis and having a really good reason to collect data,” he said.

VIEW ALL

“It’s just this natural progression or evolution to say we’ve got all these data challenges, and we’ve got to think more broadly beyond the silos and the labels of how we can solve that. And I think that’s where the real opportunity is through both the skill set and the technology.”

As legal technology and data continue to evolve at pace, Hall said that it’s currently both an “exciting” and “scary” time.

“We’ve always had a degree of change in terms of what we’ve done. Those that have got some tenure in the industry will talk about the day that we put the E in front of discovery and the innovative bit that existed when that happened. But the nature of discovery and evidence changing and evolving over time has always been present,” he said.

“I think the challenge is the velocity at which that’s occurring now and the nature of all of these different disciplines that overlap to varying degrees as well. So, I think the biggest challenge out there is the pace at which we’re dealing with that at the moment.”

Young looks after the discovery team at DLA Piper in APAC – and said that in terms of her roles over the last few years, she’s done a wide variety of things – from leading e-discovery training at legal technology consultancy Sky Discovery to working as a technical operations manager in London.

“I have probably worn all of the e-discovery hats, from data processing to running a review team, to running a project management team, to selling e-discovery for commission, which was quite enjoyable and lucrative,” she said.

“However, at DLA Piper, I was recruited to essentially grow our e-discovery offering. And in the first 12 months of being at DLA Piper, I realised, wow, we’ve got a tiny team, we’ve got huge opportunity. So, a lot of what I did and our growth in the first year was just shy of 300 per cent, which is a pretty good achievement for me, just turning up and trying to figure out what was going on, defining what it is that we do.”

In terms of specific skill sets around LDI, as the number of data-driven roles grows, the “LDI practitioner” should have a range of diverse skills and experiences, according to Bourke.

“There’s a whole host of different capabilities I think that are needed across a group of people, and what you want to be able to do is, obviously, play to people’s strengths but also then provide opportunity for development across other areas. There’s some folks that will tick many of the bottom boxes. People who have legal degrees have innate commercial acumen, an ability to understand data types and some who may even then have technical, fairly deep technical skills,” he said.

“But similarly, I think diversity across the group of people is critical in many facets. But if we stick with skills, we’ve got a partner in our group who’s got a data science background. He originally started in the intelligence world in Canada and then through the financial services and now into legal. There’s a pending new starter that will be announced shortly, who’s coming in from a quant trading background, and so, you know, very non-legal but deeply technical. So, it’s the disparate skills, but then bringing it all together in a cohesive way is the challenge.”

Wallace added that when he’s thinking about what an LDI practitioner looks like, problem-solving skills and patience are key attributes, as well as a “passion for data”.

“There are people who have the titles of data analyst, the discovery specialist, mitigation consultants. And again, thinking back to the people that I recruited over the years, have this inquisitive mind, an aptitude for solving problems, an aptitude and a passion for wanting to make some sense out of and connect the dots on a whole lot of desperate data sets using the best available technology,” he said.

“And I think they’re aptitudes, not skills. You can teach skills, but aptitudes and passion, passion for data. They’re things that come from within. So, there are a lot of people out there. And when I think back to some of the really good recruits that we had within the team over the years, they didn’t necessarily come from any discovery background, they just had some of those qualities and aptitudes.”

More than this, however, is the drive to continue learning and growing, added Hall.

“I think everybody has come here with some level of skills, but I think those that have had success and continue to grow in terms of their career and also the capabilities that everybody brings to the table now, it’s learned over time, and it’s a desire to get better,” he said.

“I think there’s a huge desire to get better at other things, and so, we’re all becoming a little better as professionals and where we were a little bit more marginalised. And I do think, to some degree, people in discovery were diminished a little bit. I think there’s a really good opportunity to rebrand and rebadge with that, and I do think it’s that growth mindset. So, it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but you’ve got to want to be hungry to try new things and engage in new stuff.”