Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that "big data" will have a bigger impact than the Internet. Consider how the Internet completely changed our lives. It's hard to imagine anything, let alone the vague concept of "big data," having that type of impact.

Yet, if you have read any article the past year about a legal technology issue, then you have undoubtedly heard about big data. There's still a lot of confusion about big data, its power, its potential, and what it means for lawyers.

The first step to understanding big data is to define it. Many people think big data just means a lot of data. That's only partially true. It is generally accepted that big data "refers to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze."