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w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7 19 faced with a chart; something to uncover discrepancies and questions about what the data says and the conclusions to which it comes. Edward Tufte, who wrote two of the best books on visualizing quantitative and qualitative data, said not all data visualizations illustrate "answers." Instead, they're there to "provoke thought." It's a useful guideline when faced with dataviz. What is the purpose or context of the visual or diagram? What is the author trying to get across? What is the data telling you? What data is missing or not represented? How reliable is the data? What is the sample size of the data? The ongoing use of visualizations in law to communicate and convey new meaning requires us to engage with infor- mation in new ways. We need to apply a new degree of con- fidence in trusting the data beneath and the story it seems to be telling us. Most of the dataviz to date has been in the legal research/ search arenas. And it is set to get infinitely more interesting through a bunch of startups and smaller legal research services (largely U.S. based at this stage). They are experimenting with visuals and interactions that can better distinguish results. And thank goodness, frankly! There is a monotonous tone and look to our current search results pages — every hit looks as relevant as the one before and after it. Ravel Law, for example, draws a visual map of your search results. The map shows relationships between cases and how important they are to one another. They use visual cues such as size of the circle (cases are bubbles in the new paradigm), the colour and the proximity and number of connections to other bubbles. These visualizations and cues can say so much more than that monochromatic page we have now. LexisNexis is experimenting with different methods to visualize the number of times your search terms appear in search results. They use colour and navigational cues to help us understand relevancy in new ways. And Westlaw's KeyCite ser- vice tracks the path of a case through successive courts and the decisions made at each level in a clear and interactive graphic. Citations and precedents lend themselves well to visualizing cases along simple timelines. Services such as Fastcase plot search results along a visual timeline (say goodbye to "Sort By . . . " dropdowns!). And they track citations to show the pro- gression of precedents through the courts. Prominent search results should jump out at you, along with the connected cases just a click away for deeper investigation. As Roam says: "Vis- ualizations should jolt with insight." Still, the development of new and exciting visualization technologies needs to progress at the same rate as our visual understanding of that data. We must continue to question how relevancy is calculated, which courts are included in the data set, and how far back it goes, to identify our "degree of confidence" in trusting the story being told. Other dataviz examples are being driven by the e-discovery and analytics markets. The need for more creative ways to sort and organize the "big data" for review has spurred new and innovative ways of visualizing connections, identifying patterns and spotting gaps. The legal analytics market is also exploring dataviz. They tell stories about success and failure rates and predict possible outcomes based on digesting the data we have about the past. These visualization innovations are finding their ways into our law firms, on to dashboards, into charts and the tools we use for decision-making. And as long as we continue to adopt a healthy degree of skepticism when relying on the visualiza- tion stories we are told, we will enjoy a greater level of dataviz than many of the visualizations that, as websites like viz.wtf put it, "make no sense." Kate Simpson is national director of knowledge management at Bennett Jones LLP and is responsible for developing the firm's KM strategy and initiatives. Opinions expressed are her own. EDWARD TUFTE, WHO WROTE TWO OF THE BEST BOOKS ON VISUALIZING QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DATA, SAID NOT ALL DATA VISUALIZATIONS ILLUSTRATE 'ANSWERS.' INSTEAD, THEY'RE THERE TO 'PROVOKE THOUGHT.' CORPORATE COUNSEL Connect with Find almost 4,000 corporate counsel and over 1,500 organizations along with fresh editorial content, information on deals and links to important resources. Lexpert.ca/ccca ntitled-8 1 2017-09-08 12:23 PM

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