Legal Operations for Financial Services & Insurance: Managing Legal Spend: Data Mining, Machine Learning & Analytics

This afternoon Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations leaders from financial services and insurance companies through a series of interactive and informative conversations on how to leverage data, machine learning and analytics to manage legal spend.

Common Challenges

1. Legal operations professionals want to drive meaningful conversations around their outside counsel spend and relationships, but lack the clean data that is needed to do so. Attendees shared that they are turning to data to be calculated and efficient in their departments’ operations as it is the single source of truth behind the legal department’s spend narrative. Without data, they struggle to:

• Negotiate better prices with their law firms
• Forecast future spend
• Distinguish between run of the mill and “bet-the-business” matters
• Influence internal ideals around law firm relationships and value

1. Legal departments are honing in on panel firm management. Attendees are executing this by monitoring spend, matters handled, performance, value provided, and whether their firm hit or exceeded budget. Some attendees noted the high volume of firms being utilized to handle their businesses’ matters, that number being upwards of 500 for some. They are intently focused on bringing that number down by determining which firms and partners are their “LeBrons” — the legal talent most pivotal to their critical matters.
2. Though diversity has been a key initiative of many attendees’ legal departments for several years, the need to move the needle on this front has accelerated in recent months. Attendees shared that it has been a struggle to get their law firms to adhere to their D&I standards as they are hesitant – or even refuse – to provide information on their firm’s diversity. To hold firms towards a higher standard, attendees noted that they are regularly evaluating their outside counsel and turning the lens on their internal operations as well to show that their business is practicing what they preach.
3. With the unexpected circumstances Covid has presented, change management is another key focus area for legal ops professionals. But as attendees noted, lawyers are not only hesitant, but resistant to change. Attendees shared that the global crisis has forced them to focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their law firms, especially as they anticipate a “tsunami” of work requiring legal expertise over the course of the next six months.

How Bodhala Can Revolutionize Your Legal Operations

Today’s legal industry is undergoing a data revolution. With the power of AI-driven data enhancement, Bodhala’s trailblazing proprietary platform allows legal departments to identify trends and utilize these insights to make more strategic business decisions.

With over $15 billion in legal invoices from over 235,000 timekeepers spread across over 30,000 law firms, Bodhala equips you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

Our unparalleled legal market intelligence arms legal departments with the ability to: benchmark their law firm rates to understand what they’re paying compared to peers in the market, search data categorized by firmographics, discover nuanced solutions and best practices for managing outside counsel spend, and initiate data-driven negotiations with outside counsel. 

Serving some of the world’s leading insurance carriers and financial institutions, Bodhala has enabled clients to initiate data-driven conversations both internally and externally. With Bodhala, corporate legal departments have the power to justify their objections, negotiations, and decisions.

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.