The Law Society

The Aim

Define a data strategy aligned to the Law Society’s new three-year strategy, select and build a modern cloud data platform, and deliver early member intelligence use cases that demonstrate real business value. Critically, drive the organisational and cultural change needed to make data and AI stick — building the team, developing the people, and embedding data as a capability that the Law Society owns and leads long-term.

Challenges

The Law Society had rich data assets and real ambitions to improve their member experience and operational efficiencies through Data & AI. But several challenges were preventing them from turning data into value.

• Fragmented data:Member data was siloed across CRM, website, Learning and Development, Google Analytics and other systems with limited integration, creating inconsistency and making it impossible to build a unified picture of the membership.
• Low analytics maturity and capability gaps: Without a modern data platform or established data capability, the organisation lacked the foundations to build the analytics and AI capabilities needed to support its mission.
• Manual, slow reporting: Reporting was manual, slow and fragmented. Too much time spent extracting data and building reports that people didn’t trust enough to make decisions from.
• No agreed strategy or leadership alignment: Appetite for change existed, but there was no data team, no shared direction, no agreed definitions and no clear ownership or drive to make it happen.

Strategic Solutions

Analytics 8 embedded within the Law Society’s teams across the full lifecycle — from initial strategy through to platform delivery and the launch of member intelligence capabilities.

• Data strategy and alignment. We facilitated executive and cross-business workshops to understand business objectives and produce a new data strategy aligned to the Law Society’s new three-year strategy.
• Platform selection. We led a structured, vendor-independent evaluation based on the Law Society’s specific requirements and priorities — recommending Azure Databricks for its governance architecture, AI-readiness and fit with the existing Azure environment.
• Azure Databricks & Power BI platform build. Applying our architectural accelerators and dbt transformation framework, we delivered a governed, scalable data platform significantly faster than a from-scratch build — without compromising on production quality or robustness.
• Member intelligence. We delivered Power BI reports on the new platform: a member segmentation report giving the organisation a data-driven view of who its members are, and a member data quality report establishing the baseline for upstream improvement.
• Capability and partnership. We were embedded within the Law Society’s teams throughout. We supported the recruitment of a Director of Data & AI and a Data Engineer, coached and upskilled the team across infrastructure, architecture and delivery, and worked alongside the newly formed product team to build confidence and capability at every level. Regular engagement with the executive leadership team shifted data from a technical initiative to a strategic priority. A multi-year managed service ensures this momentum continues.

Results

The Law Society has a data strategy that aligns to business objectives, governed modern data platform, executive alignment, and live member intelligence.

• Data elevated to an executive priority: Clear strategic vision, governance responsibilities and new business processes established across the organisation.
• Modern cloud data platform: Azure Databricks based platform delivering governed, scalable, discoverable data as the foundation for analytics and AI. Supported by our technical and architectural accelerators.
• Member intelligence in production: Data-driven view of membership segmentation and data quality, enabling targeted services and evidence-based decisions.
• Internal capability growing: A data function built from the ground up: Director of Data & AI and Data Engineer recruited, team upskilled across infrastructure, architecture, and data. Data literacy and ownership growing across the organisation.
• Long-term partnership in place: Multi-year roadmap to evolve the platform, expand use cases, build the AI foundations for the next chapter and work in partnership to enable the Law Society teams to grow and evolve.

Going Forward

The Law Society and Analytics8 are now in a long-term managed service partnership, with Analytics8 embedded as a trusted extension of the Technology & Change (T&C) leadership team. The focus has shifted from foundations to scale – advancing AI readiness, deepening governance maturity and ensuring data and AI remain aligned to the Law Society’s 3-year strategy.

Ongoing priorities include:

• AI readiness and responsible use. Advancing AI readiness, governance maturity and responsible use standards across the organisation.
• Platform and architecture for scale. Embedding data architecture across T&C workstreams and the supplier ecosystem, with continuous platform enhancement and flexible capacity to respond to emerging priorities.
• Data and AI function development. Strengthening the Data & AI leadership model, defining clear data ownership and responsibilities, and continuing to grow engineering and analytics capability within the Law Society.

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