Evan Parker
Founding Partner of Parker Analytics LLC
Three questions on Taking Charge: who stays in charge of the work, its value, and the data it runs on.
Our theme for Lexpo'27 is Taking Charge: direction, delivery and value. As legal technology moves from promising to delivering, the question becomes who stays in charge of the work, its value, and the data it runs on. We put three questions to Evan Parker, Founding Partner of Parker Analytics LLC, which advises law firms and legal departments on strategy using data analytics.
You argue that using AI for efficiency is not a strategy. When the leadership of a firm asks you what to do instead, where do you tell them to start?
Start with the basics of business: understand where your firm makes money and why, set and communicate a vision, support it with data, and track whether it’s working. AI gives firms powerful new ways to execute that strategy, even when the strategy itself is a familiar one.
AI works as an accelerator. Legal work can be produced faster, and partners and their teams can handle more matters while preserving quality. But more work on what? That’s the strategic question.
More concretely, I ask the leadership of a firm to answer two questions: What explains your success historically? And what’s your thesis for succeeding in the future? Both questions deserve evidence and rigor. Our research points toward focus: firms more concentrated in particular client industries or practices have grown revenue and profit faster.
Firms already hold far more data than they use, from matter histories to performance reviews. In your work with AmLaw 100 firms, what has been the hardest part of turning that data into something partners actually use in front of a client?
The hardest part is connecting people who understand what clients want to achieve with people who can analyze the firm’s experience. That has always been true.
Many large firms have people who count, like finance teams that track hours, rates, realization and profitability. Far fewer have people whose job is to understand what clients want to achieve, identify what predicts those outcomes in the firm’s matter histories, and translate the findings into something a partner can use in front of a client.
Two barriers explain why. The first is resources, like people, time and budget. Partners are busy serving clients and sustaining relationships, and building analytical capability takes investment. As AI improves efficiency, firms have an opportunity to reinvest some of the gains in partner time and analytical talent, particularly when pricing rewards value rather than hours.
The second is exposure. Partners are eager to see what’s possible with data, but short on time to explore and adopt it. Analysts are rarely close enough to clients to learn which questions matter.
AI is expanding what firms can learn from the information they already have. Firms need to extend trust to researchers and analysts, teaching them what clients care about and including them in conversations about client objectives and outcomes. Put partners and analysts together with common goals, and you’ll see more partners using data in front of clients.
Firms can readily explain how a fee was calculated. What they struggle to demonstrate with evidence is whether the price was right.
Evan Parker, Parker Analytics LLC
You work with both law firms and the legal departments that instruct them. What is the question a general counsel most often asks about a fee that the firm still cannot answer with evidence?
A leading question is, “Compared to what?”
Firms can readily explain how a fee was calculated, because it’s hours times rates, plus charges. What they struggle to demonstrate with evidence is whether the price was right.
A general counsel wants to know: What should comparable work cost? What did this fee buy against the result we wanted? Would a different approach have delivered more?
Answering these questions well requires agreement on the desired outcome up front, evidence from comparable matters, and a way to measure what was achieved.
About Evan
Evan Parker is Founding Partner of Parker Analytics LLC, a specialised analytics practice serving the top tier of the legal industry. For the past seven years he has worked with AmLaw 100 firms, including three of the top five, and Fortune 100 legal departments, using AI and advanced statistical models to help them understand their talent, revenue, profit, diversity and growth, and translating those models into clear decisions. His work has featured in a Harvard Law School case study and on Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. He holds a PhD in Political Science.
Continue the conversation at Lexpo'27
15 and 16 March 2027, Haarlem (near Amsterdam)