Why rising litigation is an early warning sign of an economy-wide data overload

UK law firm Shoosmiths’ prediction of a 75% rise in business disputes this year might look like a legal industry problem, but it’s an early warning sign that organisations are generating more information than they can realistically understand, navigate, or act on.

Over the past decade, organisations have quietly become data factories. Emails, contracts, messages, collaboration tools, Cloud platforms, every interaction leaves a digital footprint. Global data creation reached over 180 zettabytes in 2025, more than triple the 2020 levels.

In litigation, disputes now involve millions of documents, threads across multiple platforms and years of data. Every case becomes a forensic exercise in reconstruction: who knew what, when, and why. That process is laborious, costly, and increasingly opaque, even for experienced professionals, and clarity is becoming harder to achieve.

Data overload isn’t just a legal problem

Legal is the first profession to feel the pressure from rising data volumes. Many legal professionals now spend an estimated 40-60% of their day drafting and reviewing documents, time that would be better spent on higher-value strategic work that could better serve their clients. Finance, HR, and compliance teams are now also beginning to face the same challenge. Critical decisions now depend on navigating enormous volumes of unstructured information using tools and workflows designed for a simpler era.

There is a widening gap between what must be reviewed and what can realistically be understood. Traditional approaches no longer work at scale. Humans can’t manually review terabytes of content, and when truth becomes harder to establish, risk increases.

According to McKinsey, employees already spend nearly 20% of their working week searching for information or tracking down colleagues who can help. In high-stakes environments such as disputes, audits, or regulatory investigations, inefficiency compounds quickly, driving up costs while slowing outcomes.

The role of fact intelligence

Innovation, particularly in AI, is beginning to change how organisations are responding to data overload.

For years, automation was framed as a threat to professional services. Today, that narrative feels outdated. What’s emerging instead is a more pragmatic reality. AI is taking on the heavy lifting, document review, pattern recognition, timeline construction, freeing professionals to focus on judgment, strategy, and decision-making.

This is why we’re seeing the emergence of fact intelligence, technology designed to convert unstructured information into structured, source-linked factual records. These systems extract events, entities, timelines, and contradictions, providing teams with a coherent evidentiary foundation. In practice, this approach is already reducing manual review by over 75%.

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Establishing clarity at scale

The same transformation will extend to other data-intensive industries. Compliance teams will be able to surface anomalies faster. Finance teams can identify trends earlier. HR teams can resolve issues with clearer evidence, and the work becomes less about processing information.

But AI doesn’t remove the need for expertise. If anything, as complexity grows, human judgment becomes more important. Instead of being consumed by administrative work, professionals will be drawn into analytical work, ultimately increasing productivity. That productivity matters, particularly in the legal sector, where teams are under increasing pressure to manage growing volumes of information. Technology can deliver that clarity at scale and help manage workloads.

The predicted surge in disputes is just an early warning sign. As every business becomes data-heavy, the same pressures will surface across different sectors. The real challenge will be turning fragmented information into coherent facts. Organisations that can establish clarity across complex datasets will move faster and make better decisions. Those who don’t may find themselves overwhelmed by the very data they worked so hard to create.