From a Sea of Data to Actionable Insights: Big Data and What it Means for Lawyers

Big Data is one of the most hyped, and most confusing, terms in technology jargon. We know this to be true because Big Data tells us so. According to The Global Language Monitor,1 “Big Data” has edged out such classics as “The Cloud” and “The Next Big Thing” as the most confusing tech buzzword of the decade. But even after we peel away the hype, it is clear that Big Data is changing our society—how we research, analyze, plan, think, make policy, form relationships, and shop. This article offers some observations about Big Data to help lawyers understand its scope, its implications for business, and the legal issues that come with it.

Big Data involves drawing data from a potentially wide variety of data sets that, historically, were never intended to be combined. Big Data applies analytical tools and processes to those data sets to see if meaningful correlations and relationships exist. Value is created when actionable insights are drawn from the analysis. The data sets may be drawn from separate systems within a single enterprise, for example, customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or from external systems and data sources, for example, market analytics firms, geospatial records, government records, and weather systems.

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