Open Source Information Could Change How Legal Firms Operate
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Text: How will open source data affect the practice of law? Logo: TRAVELERS. Small Business Insurance for now & beyond. Tim Rees, Client Engagement & Information Security Manager, Blackdot Solutions.
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If you've got the external amount of data that's happening and the internal amount of data sets -- and we're seeing internal amounts of data sets that are starting to be processed because you can capture that data and you can then analyse that once you've got it through the likes of ediscovery or the big analytical softwares and companies. The problem with those is that once you've got that dataset to work on, especially within the legal sector, when you're doing technical assisted review, for instance, once you've done your collect, that's it. That's what you've got, and that's what you're playing with for that technical assisted review and reviewing that information.
So being able to then use the external amounts of information, which is exponentially growing, to enrich what you already have and add value to that adds value not just in terms of you specifically and being able to support your client or mitigate your risk even further, but also sets a nice differentiator from you and the rest of the competitors as well. So the more effectively and efficient you can extract and exploit all of those various bits of information, whether it's out there externally or whether you've got it and holding it internally, the more effectively and efficiently you can exploit that, the better your business is going to be.
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Text: Expert cover for the legal sector. www.travelers.co.uk.
Logo: TRAVELERS, Small Business Insurance for now & beyond.
Tim Rees, Client Engagement & Information Security - Blackdot Solutions
These days we all have access to an increasingly vast superabundance of valuable information, including media content, social media interactions, subscription feeds, corporate records, government re-ports, research articles and the open internet.
Known as open source information (or intelligence), it’s defined, according to Mark Lowenthal1, by the fact that “It does not require any type of clandestine collection techniques to obtain it."
In other words, It’s freely available
This information has always been with us, but what’s changed is a) the volume of it in this new age of internet and social media engagement and b) the new generation of software investigation platforms that can provide systematic access to it.
Tim Rees is Client Engagement and Information Security Manager at Blackdot Solutions, who provide this type of investigation software. As he explains, “Law firms are increasingly aware of the need to mitigate risk in a way that goes beyond ad-hoc checks on Google. And that’s where open source can add value – not just the increasing volume of it, but also its relevance, its importance and the ability to exploit it effectively.”
However, this is not just an issue of risk
Whether you’re considering a marketing initiative, a security strategy or an operational decision, the better information you have, the better decisions you’ll make. This could lead to more effective due diligence, including AML2 and KYC3 background checks. And, as well as controlling costs, you get to control the data, which is increasingly important with the imminent introduction of GDPR4.
The benefit for legal firms is clear
As Tim Rees explains, “By supplementing internal data sets with this enormously rich and growing resource, you could enormously enrich the data you have available to work with. So, as well as controlling risk and supporting your clients, you would also create a nice differentiator between you and your competitors.”
Sources
1 George, edited by Roger Z; Kline, Robert D; Lownethal, Mark M (2005). Intelligence and the national security strategist : enduring issues and challenges. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9780742540392.
2 Anti money laundering
3 Know your client
4 General Data Protection Regulation
