There are two sentences that I always like to stress with my team, one of them is attributed to Voltaire, “the great is the enemy of the good,” while the other whose author I do not know is that “the obvious always needs to be said.”
Nowadays, for a number of reasons, there is no longer room for any company/person to make decisions without taking DATA into account (this is obvious). Likewise, one may not assume that one’s data-driven journey is going to be complex and robust from day one, which is why starting with simple data processing and improving as your knowledge expands is advisable (after all, the great is the enemy of the good, right?).
While on the subject, what do we mean by data driven?
First, it is important to explain what data is. Data is nothing more than the elementary unit of uninterpreted and unstructured information. But data alone has limited value, so it needs a treatment process to reach its full potential to become useful (information), that is, something that has meaning.
Data gains meaning and utility from an intelligence process that transforms, organizes, compares, sorts, etc., and it is precisely the result of this highly personalized intelligence process that starts to support and direct your (data driven) decisions.
Therefore, in other words, it is nothing more than directing your actions and (processed) data-driven decision making in order to make them more assertive, optimizing time, therefore, money.
And how can I apply this to the Legal market?
At this point, it is important to mention that the court system was already aware of its importance in 2004, when a Constitutional Amendment provided for the obligation to create a statistical/analytical report on litigation in Brazil, later named Justiça em Números (Justice in Numbers). For those who follow it from the beginning, you know that its report serves as a motto for countless decision-making of the Judiciary Branch and derived public policies.
Likewise, data can be used managing litigation, alternative means of dispute settlement, and the contractual and advisory areas. Data such as number of lawsuits assigned, amounts involved, outcome of decisions, causes of loss or success, judgment amounts, timesheet, productivity, settlements reached, profile of lawyers and plaintiffs who settle more, number of contracts signed without review, etc. In short, today there is an ocean of data (Big data) waiting to be processed and transformed into utility.
The fact is that among the myriad changes that liquid/modern society has brought us, perhaps the one that is most present in our daily lives is the volume of decisions that we have to make routinely. And if, as Kahneman found, we let our heuristics and biases control our System One (which is fast, parallel, automatic, unconscious, and driven by emotions and associations), why don’t we let data control System Two (which is analytical, sequential, deliberative, rule-based, and uses conscious assessment to arrive at rational decisions).
Available in: https://www.lexlatin.com/opinion/cultura-basada-datos
Autor: Guilherme da Costa Ferreira Pignaneli • email: guilherme.pignaneli@ernestoborges.com.br
