Sep 8, 2026 · 7 min · 3 segments
***Here’s how legal teams can use Microsoft 365 Copilot to build interactive law firm dashboards that help find the story inside lists, spreadsheets and document libraries.*** This episode of…
When I was in business school when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, the principal problem we talked about was how to get more data and how to turn that data into information.
Today, we have the opposite problem.
We're drowning in data.
And it's a constant battle to whittle down the information racing at us to just the actionable stuff.
A SharePoint list might track new client intake requests, litigation deadlines, equipment assignments, training attendance, or marketing opportunities.
A SharePoint document library might hold monthly AR aging reports, billing exports, or operations spreadsheets.
Those sources are useful, but only if someone has the time and skill to turn them into charts, filters, summaries, and trends.
With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Copilot can help you work with content already stored in SharePoint, including lists, libraries, and files, and use natural language to create interactive reports and dashboards.
When we talk about SharePoint data for dashboards, we are usually talking about one of two things.
Think of it like a lightweight database or spreadsheet.
Each row is an item, and each column captures a specific field, such as client name, matter number, deadline, amount, or practice area.
Lists are often used for intake tracking, task tracking, asset management, and workflow queues.
Many firms already generate monthly reports from accounting, billing, practice management, or case management systems and save them to SharePoint.
Copilot can help summarize and visualize what is in those files without requiring someone to manually copy the data into a separate dashboard tool first.
But why does this matter for law firms? Dashboards are not just pretty charts.
A good dashboard answers practical management questions quickly.
Which clients have outstanding receivables over 90 days? Which practice groups are opening the most new matters? Which trainings have been completed and who still needs to attend? Historically, answering those questions often meant exporting data, cleaning it up, building formulas, creating pivot tables, formatting charts, and then doing it all again next month.
Copilot doesn't eliminate the need to understand your data, but it can significantly reduce the friction between, we have the information somewhere and we can see what is happening.
Let's consider some examples.
When I was in business school when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, the principal problem we talked about was how to get more data and how to turn that data into information.
Today, we have the opposite problem.
We're drowning in data.
And it's a constant battle to whittle down the information racing at us to just the actionable stuff.
A SharePoint list might track new client intake requests, litigation deadlines, equipment assignments, training attendance, or marketing opportunities.
A SharePoint document library might hold monthly AR aging reports, billing exports, or operations spreadsheets.
Those sources are useful, but only if someone has the time and skill to turn them into charts, filters, summaries, and trends.
With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Copilot can help you work with content already stored in SharePoint, including lists, libraries, and files, and use natural language to create interactive reports and dashboards.
When we talk about SharePoint data for dashboards, we are usually talking about one of two things.
Think of it like a lightweight database or spreadsheet.
Each row is an item, and each column captures a specific field, such as client name, matter number, deadline, amount, or practice area.
Lists are often used for intake tracking, task tracking, asset management, and workflow queues.
Many firms already generate monthly reports from accounting, billing, practice management, or case management systems and save them to SharePoint.
Copilot can help summarize and visualize what is in those files without requiring someone to manually copy the data into a separate dashboard tool first.
But why does this matter for law firms? Dashboards are not just pretty charts.
A good dashboard answers practical management questions quickly.
Which clients have outstanding receivables over 90 days? Which practice groups are opening the most new matters? Which trainings have been completed and who still needs to attend? Historically, answering those questions often meant exporting data, cleaning it up, building formulas, creating pivot tables, formatting charts, and then doing it all again next month.
Copilot doesn't eliminate the need to understand your data, but it can significantly reduce the friction between, we have the information somewhere and we can see what is happening.
Let's consider some examples.
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