Legal Services: The Data Advantage

Technology adoption across the legal sector is accelerating due to intensifying competition, higher customer expectations, increasingly complex compliance rules and regulations, and growing data privacy concerns. With these tailwinds behind them, tech-enabled legal services businesses are seeing the steady growth and healthy margins that investors prioritize.

Two Harris Williams clients—Chambers and Partners and aosphere—exemplify the investment opportunity in legal tech and information services. Both have found valuable ways of using legal data to help clients drive better and faster outcomes, improve productivity, lower costs, and improve their workflows.

Below, senior professionals in our Business Services Group and Technology Group share what made each company a leader in its segment and which traits investors should seek in legal services opportunities.

Chambers and Partners: From Rankings to Business Intelligence

Chambers and Partners is a professional legal research company that operates across hundreds of jurisdictions. It provides detailed rankings and insights on lawyers, law firms, and legal departments from around the world.

Chambers is considered a global leader in the provision of independent research, data, and analytics within the legal market, according to Derek Lewis, a managing director in our Business Services Group. “The company is the most trusted source of independent insights for the legal industry, and critical in supporting a complex and highly nuanced profession,” he says.

One of Chambers’ differentiators is its unrivaled depth of data based on an over-30-year research foundation and heritage in the sector. The company uses an advanced methodology to create its research and rankings, involving detailed interviews and research to analyze each firm’s capabilities, achievements, and sector presence. “Each year, Chambers completes extensive interviews and surveys that capture a large range of qualitative data covering client management, capabilities, sector nuances, team strengths, management style, customer sentiment, and more,” explains Thierry Monjauze, a managing director in our Technology Group. “Its continuous focus on using technology to enhance its research capabilities, while developing an ever-increasing suite of insight products, creates a further competitive advantage.”

Brian Titterington, a managing director in our Technology Group, adds that Chambers has invested significantly in both external and internal technology, creating an ideal platform to accelerate growth. “The company's tech-enabled research platform is intuitive and user friendly, making it easier to do research and produce the necessary outputs.”

Given the strength of Chambers’ brand in the sector and its extensive databases of information, it's well positioned for continued expansion. For instance, substantial white space remains for the company to create its own market for insights through its product and analytics development, which now has a foundation of technology to build upon. “There’s opportunity for new sources of growth by monetizing Chambers’ data and insights in different ways, such as through competitive and business analysis,” notes Mathew Tsui, a director in our Technology Group. “Chambers can provide law firms with insights into their performance and improvement areas based on client and market intelligence and peer analysis.”

“At the same time, monetization opportunities exist on the buyer side by providing advisory services and selection support beyond what is publicly available to those seeking lawyers,” adds Monjauze.

Aosphere: Navigating International Compliance

Like Chambers, aosphere maintains valuable legal data. The company provides online legal analysis across a range of key compliance topics, while its senior lawyers work with local counsels to aggregate and preserve regulatory information.

Aosphere’s data-as-a-service platform analyzes these regulations, obligations, rules, and restrictions for targeted, complex, and heavily regulated compliance areas. It also offers a suite of legal and compliance data products on topics such as financial derivatives, cross-border marketing, shareholder disclosure statements, and data privacy.

Sylvain Noblet, a director in our Technology Group, highlights that aosphere is uniquely positioned to capitalize on multiple compliance-related market tailwinds to drive long-term growth. For example, regulatory requirements are rising, as is enforcement of penalties for compliance breaches. “Constant regulatory changes, conflicting and inconsistent remits, and multiple jurisdictions for regulatory adherence create costly complexity that’s more difficult to track,” he says. “And, as organizations increasingly engage globally, their need to understand local compliance issues around the world will continue to rise.”

A key value driver for aosphere is its team of lawyers who take complex rules and regulations written by legal professionals and regulators and explain them in an actionable way for companies. Bryce Walker, a managing director in our Business Services Group, adds that aosphere standardizes its reporting to present information on a law or regulation consistently for every country or issue. “Aosphere ultimately saves its clients significant time in monitoring and understanding the ever-changing compliance and regulatory landscape,” he says.

Data’s Enduring Value

Law firms are rapidly becoming more reliant on cloud-based tools, automation, and artificial intelligence, while legal delivery is becoming more tech-driven, data-backed, and accessible.

Data will become increasingly important to the legal sector over time as firms work to create efficiencies and manage growing complexity. Meanwhile, a substantial opportunity exists to leverage GenAI across the world of law to drive further efficiencies, productivity, and added value.

The future is bright for Chambers, aosphere, and other data and tech businesses that can offer unique, high-quality information to their business customers. To discuss the value-creation potential within tech-enabled legal services in detail, please contact our senior professionals.