The demand for data scientists and talent capable of working with AI technology is rapidly increasing, according to a new survey by recruiters Robert Walters and VacancySoft. They also noted that the economy is experiencing an ‘automation paradox’, where the roles most affected by new technology are in the ‘middle-tier’ of the workforce.

First, the growing demand for data experts. Focusing on the UK as a good example of a G7 economy that is undergoing a period of employment role evolution, the survey found that specialist data science and analytics roles have increased significantly within medium to large companies in the UK between 2015 and 2019 (see below).

They also found that job growth for information security has ‘levelled-out after what was an active recruitment period in the lead-up to the GDPR deadline’.

This triggers two questions: why now? And also: does this connect to the legal world?

To answer this, check out the table below.

How much is a zettabyte? Er….well, it’s a lot of data. Using more prosaic language, if a gigabyte is a mole hill, then zettabytes are Himalayan in scale. And there is no sign yet that this will slow.

It’s true that part of this explosion in data is due to video content, but it’s fair to say that text-based, unstructured data has also grown rapidly in the commercial world as well.

So what? If corporate clients, banks and insurance companies are producing more data that provides one challenge and one opportunity. The challenge is to keep up the legal sector’s ability to manage this flow of words and numerical data that relates in large part to contractual obligations. The opportunity is to use tech that can provide insights into this growing data set to help the clients.

Hence, law firms and large companies that handle large data stacks need….or at least should have these days….data scientists on hand to help them with it. In the legal sector this is no doubt tricky, as the data they’re working with has distinct legal aspects and therefore may need someone with science and legal knowledge. Those are very rare.

How many firms does this impact? Likely it relates for now to the firms handling very large e-discovery matters, as well as major M&A deals and compliance reviews, as well as those companies seeking to really look into their contractual data – and have the resources and the will to make that happen.