Business intelligence continues to be a hot law firm management and legal technology topic. The cover story of the current issue of Law Firm Inc. is on BI. And the October ILTA white paper (PDF) has another outstanding BI article by John Alber of Bryan Cave.
Regular readers may recall that I have cited other BI articles and related comments by John. In Mining for Gold, John explains clearly and persuasively the business benefit and imperative for law firms doing BI. This article, directed at a more technological savvy audience than his prior ones, has an excellent discussion of some of the technology and software architectural considerations of law firm BI. On the business side, it emphasizes data acquisition (assimilation), interpretation, and most importantly, distillation into actionable information. On the technical side, it explains data warehouses and cubes and stresses the importance of data consistency and accuracy. This is an excellent article for any law firm considering its BI options.