Contract analytics can be amazing assets for legal teams.
The best legal analytics software collects contract data and parses all legal terms and clauses, providing teams with actionable insights. With artificial intelligence (AI), the implementation of contract data analytics is even more robust.
A recent guide published by Mordor Intelligence stated that the Legal Analytics Market is expected to grow from $2.35 billion USD in 2023 to $4.91 billion USD by 2028. In short, the legal industry is increasingly leaning on data analysis, which makes having a solid solution on deck all the more important.
In this article, we’re looking at what legal analytics software can do, its benefits, and listing some of the best tools on the market.
What is legal analytics software?
Legal analytics software collects and analyzes legal data. These tools take in large amounts of information and portray it in a digestible format. They can spot patterns in legal data faster and more efficiently than the human eye. Legal professionals can take these insights to help with better decision-making.
“Legal should be pushing businesses forward, not just receiving tasks. So, if a legal team doesn't equally view themselves as part of the business, actively making business decisions along with the marketing, product, and finance teams, then the symbiotic relationship between legal and business is lost. And I question really the value of legal over the long term of a company unless I can propel it differently than it's operating today.”
~ Megan Neidermeyer, CLO, Apollo.io
Aligning Legal’s Limitless Potential to Business Goals
Lawyers use legal analytics for legal research, predictive analytics, marketing, and gathering business insights. Without a tool like this, it’s tricky to dig through and understand all the legal data lawyers collect. Information on the industry, clients, and internal practices all live in one place. Instead of wading through tons of data, lawyers can lean on analytics software to provide the information for them.
Also read: Best Practices & Strategies for In-House Counsel to Stay Informed on Civil Litigation
How does AI power legal analytics software?
Without a doubt, AI in legal software is on the rise. It’s an effective and efficient tool for understanding large amounts of data.
AI uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to parse and understand the information within contracts. It locates key terms and clauses. AI also understands the context around a term and finds opportunities for clarity. AI is making monumental strides by assisting legal teams with analytics.
What are the benefits of using a legal analytics tool?
#1 Make more informed decisions
With the right contract data on hand, you can feel better prepared to make data-driven decisions. Legal analytics help turn real-time contract lifecycle data into these actionable insights that drive smart business decisions. It delivers data promptly, so you can rest assured that you’re making decisions based on the most up-to-date and relevant information.
#2 Improve the legal research process
According to a 2022 Association of Corporate Counsel survey, 29% of lawyers listed legal research tooling as a top priority for their legal tech stack. No matter where you are in the legal contracting process, you must conduct research. A good contract research tool will support you by assessing everything from industry compliance and regulatory changes to trends. Legal analytics tools allow you to review former contracts and learn from their processes and outcomes.
“You can either be part of the cleanup crew or do stuff to avoid that cleanup situation altogether."
~ Gitanjali Faleiro, GC, Company Secretary, CCO at Greenhill & Co.
Navigating the C-Suite as a GC
#3 Boost client outcomes
With the best data insights and tools to make it happen, you can give clients the best experience possible. A solid legal analytics platform helps streamline the contracting process and provides insights along the way. It gives law firms a competitive advantage to offer more robust legal services for their clients.
#4 Save time and money
Contract analytics tools that use AI have the power to extract actionable insights that you can turn into changes to save time and money. It identifies gaps, discrepancies, and bottlenecks in your contracting process that you might not have noticed otherwise. This data allows you to make minor iterative adjustments to your legal operations for long-term success.
Also read: Overcoming Roadblocks to the Adoption of Generative AI by In-House Legal Teams
5 Best Legal Analytics Tools
#1 Clio
Clio’s Law Firm Insights Dashboard is a simple, all-in-one analytics tool. It’s ideal for legal firms requiring simple tooling and easy customization.
Features:
- Time tracking: Understand where your billable time is going, so you can accurately invoice and avoid wasting time
- Performance measurements: Identify what drives firm performance by capturing data over a given time frame and identifying trends
- Key metrics for business growth: Clio captures and documents the utilization, realization, and collection rates to help you make guided decisions for business growth
Pros:
- A user-friendly interface lowers the barrier to entry for most users
- In-depth customization options make it easy for legal teams to build a system and dashboard that meets their needs
- Managing invoices as well as entering time and expenses spent is simple
Cons:
- Some users have experienced syncing issues when integrating information across multiple platforms
- Formatting reports tends to be clunky and requires a lot of customization from the user
- Client support services could be more consistent
Pricing:
All pricing tiers bill per user and are on a rolling monthly cadence. Optional add-ons are available for the upper three tiers, including Clio Grow, for an additional fee, and HIPAA Compliance.
- EasyStart: $39 USD per month
- Essentials: $69 USD per month
- Advanced: $99 USD per month
- Complete: $129 USD per month
#2 SpotDraft
SpotDraft is an end-to-end contract management tool. It helps legal teams manage contracts through their entire lifecycle while gathering valuable analytics.
With SpotDraft, legal teams gather data-driven insights to improve their contracting process and make smarter business decisions. You can eliminate inefficiencies, focus on the most impactful work, and prove the value of your work through clear insights.
Features:
- Workflow management and automation: Users can build customized automated workflows to streamline contract management and save time
- Performance measurements: Use data to document the value of a legal team’s work across the organization
- Efficiency insights: Get clear insights into where in your process you can save time and directly impact the bottom line
- Charts and graphs: Along with providing written data, SpotDraft generates charts and graphs to give users precise visual representations of their insights
Pros:
- Templates make it easy for users to create, manage, and close deals faster
- Smooth and clear onboarding reduces any hurdles when getting started
- SpotDraft’s support team is responsive to address any and all user inquiries 24/7 via chat, email, or Slack
- Efficiently able to produce and ship large amounts of contracts while securely collecting and storing their data for future reference
- Competitive pricing options make SpotDraft more accessible to a wide range of teams
Cons:
- As a fully-customizable legal analytics tool, some users may need to do more heavy lifting upon adoption to set up the workflow in a way that works for their contract management process
Pricing:
SpotDraft takes a unique approach to software pricing by providing customer pricing packages based on your precise needs.
You can learn more about SpotDraft’s pricing plan here.
#3 IronClad
IronClad is contract management software that provides actionable contract data through its reporting dashboard. It records contract performance, risks, opportunities, and compliance metrics.
Features:
- Turn tracking: Gain visibility into the contract tracking process by understanding who is responsible for reducing blockers long term
- Insights: Users can reduce blockers and gain organization-wide insights into where your team stands in the legal contracting process
- Dashboard: A clear and straightforward dashboard makes identifying bottlenecks based on gathered analytics easy
Pros:
- An intuitive user interface with an active community network simplifies learning the tool as a new user
- Transparency throughout the platform and the entire contracting process boosts cross-functional alignment
- Easy version control when making changes to agreements
Cons:
- It tends to be more expensive than other options based on industry standards
- There’s an inability to edit documents with complex formatting
- Difficult to edit standardized contract templates because the editor functionality is limited. This can make updating contracts based on identified opportunities for improvement challenging
Pricing:
IronClad creates pricing based on each legal team’s unique needs.
#4 ContractWorks
ContractWorks is a scalable contract lifecycle management tool that provides users with a tracking platform featuring unique and actionable insights. Users can select to track the metrics and reporting that are most impactful for their goals.
Features:
- Custom tags: Ability to incorporate custom tags into documents for simplified and customized data tracking
- Scheduled reporting: Book reports to run automatically to share with key stakeholders regularly
- Milestone alerts: Establish customized milestone alerts and receive email notifications beforehand
Pros:
- Legal teams can establish personalized reporting based on their unique needs and goals
- You can create a notification calendar to plan for critical dates, upcoming obligations, or any other contract deadline
- Easy to learn, use, and scale as your team and business grows
Cons:
- Inability to bulk edit contracts based on updated contract data or insights
- AI used for legal analytics is present but limited
- The pricing system isn’t ideal for smaller legal teams
Pricing:
You can sign up for a free trial before using the product. All pricing tiers are billed annually but listed on a per-month basis. They each include unlimited users for a flat fee.
- Standard: $700 USD per month
- Professional: $900 USD per month
- Premium: $2,000 USD per month
#5 MyCase
MyCase is designed as a case management tool for law firms. It offers the tools to gather insights from legal firm operations while improving efficiency. Legal teams can find up-to-date snapshots of billable hours, case revenues, time entries, expenses, and more.
Features:
- Case Dashboard: Users can see a snapshot of upcoming events, tasks, case updates, and more—all in one place
- Customizable Case Reports: Adjust how you see case data depending on your unique needs
- Case Timeline: Gain clear insights into everything that happens along a case’s timeline so that you can make adjustments in future processes
Pros:
- A free trial is available
- Track where each case is within its lifecycle to understand your workflow and how much time cases take at each stage
- Integrations with other contracting tools create a cohesive tooling ecosystem to boost efficiency
Cons:
- The support team isn’t very responsive, making getting help challenging
- The user portal could be more user-friendly
- Pricing tends to be on the higher side of the industry
Pricing:
Legal teams can pay on a monthly rolling basis or sign up for an annual plan billed monthly. Each pricing plan is billed per user every month.
- Basic: $49 USD (per month) or $39 USD (annual plan)
- Pro: $79 USD (per month) or $69 USD (annual plan)
- Advanced: $99 USD (per month) or $89 USD (annual plan)
Work faster and smarter with the right legal analytics software
When implemented strategically, legal analytics can provide enormous insights into how to make smarter decisions and improve contracting processes. The right tool within your legal tech stack makes these data-driven insights all the more impactful.
The good news? SpotDraft can help.
SpotDraft is your end-to-end contract management software that automatically gathers insights from legal documents and presents them to legal teams. All the information you need to make smart decisions, improve workflows, and save time is consolidated into customizable reports.
Give SpotDraft a try today to get valuable insights into your legal operations.
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