In-House Counsel

Seven more visual methods to portray law department data

By Rees Morrison

Earlier I summarized 11 ways to depict data visually (See my post of May 3, 2008: from a chart.). Since that time, I have dredged up seven more methods.

Bubble charts, where the size of the bubble combines with the bubble?s location against the left and right axis to show three data points at once.

Column charts, which I have referred to in at least six posts (See my posts of March 23, 2007: statistical moments; Feb. 19, 2007: standard deviations and data on outside counsel invoices; Nov. 19, 2005: Google?s legal staff growth rate; Feb. 11, 2007: cascading column charts; July 3, 2007: consolidating work with too few firms; and Feb. 23, 2008: case resolution times.).

Dials often appear in dashboards (See my post of Dec. 9, 2005: dashboards.).

Double-axis graphs let you show data that has scales of very different magnitudes on the two vertical axes, such as the number of months cases have been pending versus dollars spent, or years out of law school versus base compensation..

Tag clouds use font sizes and styles to convey how frequently words are used, which for example might depict words used in task descriptions on invoices.

Treemaps (See my post of May 6, 2008: website for graphical explorations.).

Venn diagrams (See my post of Jan. 3, 2007: Venn diagrams.).

Full post as published by Law Department Management on May 07, 2008 (boomark / email).