Morgan Lewis: Early Data Strategy — From Case Assessment to Intelligence in the Age of GenAI

Morgan Lewis Of Counsel Matthew Hamilton co-authored a guide for Legal Data Intelligence (July 28) arguing that legal departments and law firms need to evolve from Early Data Strategy (EDS) as a case-level tactical exercise into a strategic data-driven approach that enables better decision-making at organizational scale. The guide covers the requirements for deploying GenAI responsibly across legal data: information governance frameworks, AI vendor contracting disciplines, data mapping, and governance structures that manage legal, privacy, and regulatory risk. The core shift is from EDS as a litigation-preparedness tool (early case assessment, early data assessment) to EDS as permanent infrastructure that structures how the firm's data is organized for AI-scale analysis. For KM directors: the "from assessment to intelligence" framing describes the same transition happening in knowledge systems — from search-and-retrieve to AI-orchestrated analysis — and the governance requirements Hamilton outlines (data mapping, vendor contracting, classification frameworks) are the same infrastructure KM teams need to build out to support trusted AI use.