The future looms for data analytics

A success story in the world of legal technology

Loom Analytics, another Canadian success story in the emerging world of legal technology, is poised to play a leading role in the application of data analytics to legal services.

As fits the trend in legal tech companies, Mona Datt, president of Loom, is not a lawyer.

She’s an engineer who understands t he powerful stories that can be told if data is properly collected and analyzed.

“Analytics has two important components: it gives you information about data that exists in a particular context ( like law), and it’s information you can use for something,” she said.

Datt co- founded Loom in 2015 to unleash the stories locked within Canadian court decisions.

For instance, how do certain judges rule on certain cases? What arguments were significant in creating that win? Which lawyers win or lose in front of which judges? The answers to these questions can help formulate litigation strategy.

Readers will recall that Toronto- based Loom won the People’s Choice Award at the Canadian Bar Association’s legal technology competition, The Pitch, last August.

At that time Loom was still beta testing its product and looking for its first important client. While some law firms expressed interest in the product, most just didn’t know what to do with it.

That soon changed. As it happened, Kate Simpson, national director of knowledge management at Bennett Jones LLP was at the competition. She also writes about legal technology and knowledge management for Canadian Lawyer Magazine. Simpson interviewed Datt, and came away impressed enough with Loom’s potential to try the product on a pilot basis.

The 30- day pilot project at Bennett Jones was a success, she said.

“We were convinced very quickly,” Simpson s ai d. “Knowledge management is about enabling efficiency and continuous improvement, and t he f act t hat Loom would allow us to get deeper insights and deeper answers faster was a huge selling point.”

Bennett Jones i s now moving Loom “i nto production” by introducing it to lawyers and end- users t hroughout t he f i rm. To this end, the firm is preparing a number of use cases to sort out how best to put the product into workflow.

Datt is excited about working wi t h Bennett Jones, and not just because of the revenue, but also because “it will allow us to continually improve Loom.” Loom’s success with Bennett Jones has also opened doors with other national Canadian law firms.

The Canadian offices of Gowling WLG have j ust signed on for a pilot project with Loom.

Loom started as a legal research service, but it has the power to do much more than that.

In fact, Datt envisions law firms using the product to gain business intelligence on competitors, to make human resource decisions, and to help lawyers make better predictions of litigation success.

Whatever t he f ut ure holds for Loom itself, the company is another clear harbinger of change and transformation in Canadian legal services.

It’s not difficult to predict that the successful law firms of 2025 and beyond will be highly data-driven entities.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT ENABLING EFFICIENCY.