Extract from Jennifer Bantelman’s article “How to Build an Effective Legal Ops Dashboard”
A colleague I once had was fond of the phrase, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” While there are of course exceptions to this rule, I think it’s an excellent starting point for explaining the goals, purpose, and design of a legal ops dashboard.
A good dashboard is specific to the organization and its particular needs. Consider the problem, the data you have available, and who your stakeholders are. Put simply, not all dashboards are created equal, and you can’t always use the same dashboard for differing purposes, due to the nature of the data. Consideration of the actual problem is critical at the outset, because it’s entirely possible that the metrics you currently track don’t adequately identify the success or failure of that problem, and you may want to modify accordingly. Similarly, the most important attributes of your metrics are that they are actually measurable, and that they relate to the issues you are trying to keep track of and report off of. There should always be a reason for the metrics you track, and those reasons should be easily explainable. Finally, think about the metrics and the overall dashboard format as it will be consumed. If you’re presenting on a monthly basis to a highly technical audience of forensic analysts, the data they can consume will be very different from a room of Associate General Counsel.
Now let’s explore some specifics as related to common reasons to use one, including typical metrics and cadences, as well as the most common missteps.
