As McKinsey, opens new tabaptly stated in 2016 we are in “the age of analytics: competing in a data driven world.” There is no better evidence of this than in our daily consumer experiences. Amazon recommends what sneakers you should buy based on your purchasing history. The app from your favorite grocery store auto-creates a digital grocery list for your online order. Lyft, Blue Apron and Airbnb ask you to rate your experience after each purchase to improve the customer experience.

Legal is not immune from this data-driven trend, as evidenced by the crowded market of legal tech providers striving to create the perfect combination of data and tech to provide the “Amazon” experience. As we sharpen our focus on the impact of data in legal, what we have come to know in our personal lives will soon enough be the new normal in the legal profession. Here are the trends powering that change.

Legal technologies are full of valuable data, opens new tab. The legal tech market, which is expected to reach $2.49 billion in revenue by 2025
, opens new tab , is a rich source of data for the legal function. There are entire categories of legal tech designed to mine public and company data for the legal department, including litigation analytics (Westlaw Edge, Lex Machina), market intelligence (What’s Market, Pitchbook) and operational and negotiation data on contracts (Ironclad, Icertis, Eigen, Blackboiler, Draftwise).

The availability of APIs , opens new tab(application programming interfaces) is also increasing. They provide legal departments with access to the “mountains of legal data being generated every day, opens new tab” , Through APIs, robust, external data sources and applications can be combined with legal department data to, among other things, spot how trends in the market are impacting the frequency of litigation, contractual preferences of customers and market deal terms.