In the age of the Internet of things, data, whether small data or big data, can be a huge asset. Every day we come into contact with a huge amount of data, which, if taken individually and in an unorganized way, can be confusing, and even frightening; however, if there were ways to use them in a systematic and conscious way, the benefit that could be obtained, in terms of reducing costs, time and inefficiencies, would be considerable.

Considering this awareness, it is interesting to investigate the possible uses that a law firm can make of the data in its possession to boost its business. To do this, it is necessary to answer this preliminary question: what data does a law firm have at its disposal?

Among all the existing professional realities, the law firm is one of the most equipped with data: just think that, for a matter of continuity and duty to store all the information and documents, the archives contain a massive amount of data. Law firms which have been on the market for ten, fifteen or twenty years now have archives that are loaded with information that can be used to develop databases capable of being used for multiple purposes. Such data, of course, are technically "dirty", i.e. they must be filtered, normalized and processed to make them suitable for machine learning algorithms. After this procedure, as mentioned above, the uses can be more than one.

First of all, one can take into account clients' data, such as name, surname, age and tax and social security code, which must always be within the lawyer's reach.

Then there are the historical documents, i.e. all those data contained in contracts, practices or documents produced during the life of the law firm, which consist of references to articles, the use of specific clauses for certain types of contracts, the qualification of the cases and the solutions adopted.

Additionally, one may refer to the data concerning the management of the law firm to make the processes and business fluxes traceable and measurable. By way of example, by having available the data regarding the working hours, that each resource of the firm needs to complete a given task, it is possible to evaluate the productivity of the individual human resources.

All this data set is, in most cases, stored in archives which rarely interact with new activities undertaken by the Firm. In fact, although it is possible to consult them at any moment, it takes time, which could well be saved with intelligent use of the data that the Firm already possesses but that does not exploit in their full potential.

In brief, the awareness that must be acquired concerns the fact that thanks to the right use of data, it will become possible to relieve the lawyer from activities that could be automated, thus allowing him to concentrate on issues where his contribution constitutes a significant added value.

At this point, the question is the following: how could these data boost the business of a single law firm?

The use of data enables the law firm to improve its efficiency, both by speeding up an organizational and productive process and by permitting a more streamlined control and administration.

The first use of data is simple and commonly used in other fields.

Let's suppose that we have to write a contract. Among the information to be included are those relating to the parties. To date, many law firms have the possibility to cloud the address book with all the information of their customers, nonetheless, these address books are used simply as dematerialization of the paper ones. Digitizing the address book, on the other hand, means that it would not only be stored in the computer but that it would interact with other software by enabling a flow of information from one tool to another. Just imagine that with a single click you can add all the customer's data in any document, even in a contract. This procedure currently is, in most cases, done manually, with the possibility that, due to a distraction or a key pressed by mistake, some data may be incorrect.

What's the next step? After having filled in the information concerning the parties and described the premises that led to the conclusion of the contract, the layer will start writing the clauses. The clauses can be classified in a specific way but the form in which they are expressed changes from lawyer to lawyer. To the present day, when a certain clause is needed, it is recreated from zero or it is recovered by searching through documents similar to the one that the lawyer is drafting. By digitizing the archives of previously created documents, the lawyer will have to sacrifice some of its time to re-order all the documents, but in the long-term, he will benefit from a software that recommends a certain clause by virtue of what he has started to write or because that clause is frequently included in similar documents.

As well as for production, data are also very valuable for the management of the law firm. In a metric-centric world (i.e. in which everything is evaluated through metrics) it becomes fundamental to have information about the current status of the firm, of its resources and its practices.

This allows us to implement a meritocratic system, rewarding those who produce the most. To this day, many law firms are unable to evaluate their work: even assessing their performance or comparing it with past performances is complicated, if not even impossible.

On the contrary, digitizing and using the data enables to reduce, and in some cases neutralize, the probability that a human error is committed and it is not a remote hypothesis that an error could damage the work or the financial or managerial stability of the law firm. Indeed, in other sectors, there are already solutions that, in the event of an alleged error, notify the user of an alert giving him/her the possibility to correct or validate it. In law firms, on the other hand, software such as the above-mentioned one is not widespread.

Digitization is often perceived as a threat, a way to "steal work" from consultants. Conversely, we believe that it is essential for lawyers to be able to provide their clients with an added value that is not overburdened by costs, delays and inefficiencies resulting from having to perform repetitive and automatable processes.