How Maps Can Help You
Visualize and Understand Management Data
By Rees Morrison
Altman Weil, Inc.
Copyright © 2015 Altman Weil, Inc., Newtown Square, PA, USA
All rights for further publication or reproduction reserved.
Law department managers or law firm partners who want to make better management
decisions should consider data that links to geographic locations. This article explains
how lawyers who have management responsibility can combine maps and data to gain
new insights. When you overlay data on a map, you unleash a powerful visualization
tool for understanding both the data and its connection to a location.
Let’s start with an example of a general counsel who wants to better understand and
communicate her company’s patent holdings around the world. Several choices are
available.
One way would be to write out the data in text: “In the United States we have 200
patents, in Canada we have 55 patents, in Britain 32, Japan 16 4” Prose is familiar
and clear, but it takes work for a reader to understand the overall distribution and long
paragraphs can bog down readers.
A second way to appreciate the data would be create a table. Again, the reader has to
perform some internal calculations and form a mental map to grasp the distribution.
Country
USA
Canada
Britain
Japan
Patents
200
55
32
16
Or the general counsel could visualize the patent holdings in different countries as a
simple bar plot. Among other benefits of this graphic depiction, the proportions between
the four countries stand out prominently.
How Maps Can Help You Visualize and Understand Management Data
by Rees W. Morrison
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Patents per Country
200
150
100
50
0
Japan
Britain
Canada
USA
What this article addresses, however is the effectiveness of a graphical visualization
that is more sophisticated than a bar plot: something called a “choropleth.” A choropleth
presents the underlying data on a map that is colored to correspond to the data.
Let’s say a law department has related law suits pending in several states. In the plot
below, we see a partial map of the United States. It is partial because it only shows
states where the cases are active.
Fees Paid for Pending Litigation – By State
How Maps Can Help You Visualize and Understand Management Data
by Rees W. Morrison
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The underlying data for this choropleth are fees paid to law firms to represent the
company in cases pending in those particular states. The legend in the lower left corner
of the plot shows a spectrum from light green to dark red representing the amount of
fees corresponding to each color. The lowest amounts are depicted on the bright green
end of the scale (Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin) and the highest fees, somewhere
north of $4 million, are represented by dark reds (Indiana and Washington).
Immediately, this choropleth conveys much more than either text, a table, or a bar plot
can convey. This is the beauty of insightful graphics: our eyes spot patterns and
comparisons instantly.
It is easy, by the way, to add labels for fee amounts on the states so that the reader can
know the precise figures. Impressionistically we understand the point from the colors
but we can then confirm the precise figures from the labels.
The plot below shows a second way to represent data in geospatial form. ‘Geospatial’ is
a term data scientists use to describe the combination of data and cartography (maps).
Primary Law Firms and their Offices
Major business unit sites in green; Largest firm office in blue
This plot shows the main offices of the nine law firms that a hypothetical law department
has anointed as its primary providers. In this example, each firm is represented by a
different color with a different shape within that color for the firm’s branch offices. The
branch offices are round whereas the main office is square.
The legend to this geospatial plot lets the reader know which firm is which.
How Maps Can Help You Visualize and Understand Management Data
by Rees W. Morrison
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So, for example, firm Able has its largest office in Pittsburgh (the red triangle in western
Pennsylvania, to the left of the green rectangle) and branch offices in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, and New York (each a red circle).
Data analysts could add a table to the plot so that readers can choose the mode they
are most comfortable with.
One more addition to this plot should be noted. This company has three main locations
where it manufactures its products. The green rectangles represent those locations.
Thus, at a glance, the reader can see whether each primary law firm has offices that are
near the major manufacturing sites. This might be important, for example, if the law
department wanted to have some on-site presence by outside counsel.
Let’s look at another way of integrating data and maps, but this time we will add a third
dimension. The plot below shows law department payments by state. The height of the
blue column above state corresponds to the total amount spent in that state.
Spending per Lawsuit – By State
For managers in law departments and law firms, geospatial mapping is probably less
familiar than other graphic data depictions. Partly this is because it is difficult to produce
plots like this in Excel, the lingua franca of data analytics. Partly it is because the
occasions to connect numbers to physical locations arise less frequently than other
matchups.
How Maps Can Help You Visualize and Understand Management Data
by Rees W. Morrison
Page 5 of 5
The examples described above are just some of the options available to you. Law firms
could map their offices against the headquarters of their major clients. Or they might
map the locations of their winning jury verdicts. The plot below shows another
possibility – in which a firm maps the law schools graduated by its associates. The
lighter the color of the state correlates to fewer associates (with black indicating no law
school graduates from that state). Here, California, New York and Ohio law schools
were the alma maters of between 126 and 300 associates.
Current Associates’ Law Schools – By State
Once you get the hang of visualizing your metrics on a map, you can realize the
potential for this data-analytic methodology.
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About the Author
Rees Morrison is a principal of Altman Weil. For more than two decades, he has been
a preeminent management advisor to general counsel and corporate law departments.
He has a specialty practice in data analytics for legal organizations. Contact Mr.
Morrison at rwmorrison@altmanweil.com.