Big Data and analytics
Terry Wong · 2021
Human digital activity, enhanced by improving technology and expanding communications networks, has led to an explosion of data. Organisations rightly view data as the critical ingredient for gaining competitive advantage in the modern digital era. Big Data (i.e. bodies of data too large to be processed and stored in traditional computer systems) is the norm in non-trivial business systems. Analytic methods, increasing in complexity from descriptive statistics and diagnostic analytics onwards to predictive and prescriptive analytics, incorporate decades of accumulated experience in data science and machine learning to enable startling new applications informed by organised data. A digital lawyer, aware of the capabilities and risks that come with Big Data and analytics, and paying particular attention to analytic technologies relevant to the practice of law, will be well-positioned to advise clients with data assets and to deliver higher-value service with less toil through the informed use of increasingly accessible technologies built with data.