by Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek
We are going to assume that readers know nothing about “big data,” including its definition. Though everyone has heard the term thrown around, when we use it in our presentations, audiences look at us blankly. So let us begin at the beginning.
What is Big Data? Here’s the first problem. There IS no stan-
dard definition. Our vastly oversimplified definition is “big data” is so vast an amount of data that it cannot be analyzed by tradi- tional tools. “Predictive analytics,” which uses statistics, modeling, machine learning, data mining, and more, is applied to big data in order predict future events, suggest how to manipulate them, identify trends, and much more.
Big Data All Around Us
We are often unaware of “big data” un- til we hear it referenced. Perhaps you know the TV commercial in which a competitor throws spears at Google by advising view- ers that Google goes through all your e-mail
Big Data: Big Pain or Big Gain for Lawyers? country music stations to advertise.
(now THAT is big data) and sells the analy- sis results to advertisers so they may deter- mine which ads will target you. The commer- cial must be working since we’ve seen it for months everywhere. The February 25th
Why Should Lawyers Care About Big Data?
issue of NetworkWorld
featured a story called “Big Data Gets Cre- ative at Etsy.” At the website for this com- pany selling handmade crafts and vintage items, Hadoop-based analytics have been used to mine vast quantities of data and turbo-charge sales with the results. Sales jumped 70% last year. Roughly 75GB of cus- tomer transaction data is stored each day, aggregated and analyzed.
Any of Etsy’s
150-plus engineers can deploy live code to the website at any time—and that happens twenty to thirty times per day based on their data sifting.1 One more story worth mentioning gave us a giggle. The International Association of Fire Chiefs has used predictive analysis of big data to learn that many of the most desirable volunteer firefighters like hunting and country music. As a result, it advises fire departments to hold recruitment events in sporting goods stores and to partner with
Those in the e-discovery world have be- gun to grasp the implications of big data, but most other lawyers have not. Big data presents both challenges and opportunities for lawyers—so many that it is almost impos- sible to know where to start. Big data will be used against lawyers and law firms (more about that later) and will become a source of new work and a worry about the implications for work we’ve always done. Donald Woch- na, chief legal officer at Vestige Digital In- vestigations, was quoted in Law Technology News: “Big data in general, and predictive data analytics in particular, are the potential holy grail in the practice of law.”2 “Fast, high-performing data analytics can
help enterprises and law firms harness ex- panding data collections to guide them on everything from finding profitable efficien- cies to making important decisions in case strategy,” added Matt Gillis, vice president and managing director for litigation tools
www.vtbar.org
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