Data analytics maturity models (and legal operations maturity models in general) are the topic of discussion with Peter Eilhauer, Managing Director for Legal Spend Solutions at Epiq.

Peter knows his stuff about legal spend management–he’s been working in and around it for 16 years. He started as a consultant helping law firms manage costs and then jumped ship to help corporate legal departments manage their legal spend. Most recently with Epiq and just before that with Elevate Services.

Peter describes a maturity model as “a set of structured levels that describe how well the behaviors, practices and processes of an organization can reliably and sustainably produce required outcomes.”

Stated another way, a legal operations maturity model is a way of measuring how well a legal department is using their people, processes and technology to handle legal work.

Although Peter mainly discusses maturity models as they relate to data analytics (and specifically how to use data analytics to monitor and control legal spending), maturity models can be applied to many legal operations functions.