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Finally, a Faster Way to Do Ediscovery

by Christina Ling

Two people collaborating together at a desk

The saying “time equals money” holds especially true in ediscovery. Projects have tight deadlines and even more urgent daily requests. Surveys consistently show that lawyers’ top priorities when using ediscovery software include speed. In the EDRM’s 2017 Survey “In-House Legal Benchmarking Report,” respondents rated “completing tasks efficiently” as the second biggest challenge.

Although legal professionals expect ediscovery technology to be speedy and produce instantaneous results, the reality is that most tasks handled within ediscovery platforms are manual, cumbersome, and time-consuming. Little delays from seemingly simple but tedious tasks, such as uploading, processing, searching, reviewing, and producing data, can add up to big delays and even bigger costs. Even worse, slowness may potentially result in lost customers.

In order to meet these expectations, ediscovery software solutions must be architected for speed. Faster technology translates into earlier insights, better results, and lower costs—all of which are invaluable in ediscovery. Having a faster “machine” is obviously necessary but the other secret to going fast is the ability to automate manual tasks.

At Everlaw, we prioritize speed so much that it is one of five key principles that guide our approach to building software. And there’s no better way to demonstrate that commitment than to point to examples in the product itself. In this first blog of a series, we delve deeper into a single key principle, showcasing just a few ways in which speed manifests in the Everlaw platform.

Rapid Data Ingestion

Organizations no longer have to wait for physical media to be shipped or for data upload and processing to finish. Everlaw users can easily drag-and-drop data into the platform or upload data directly from popular cloud storage providers like Box, SharePoint, and Google Vault to name a few. Using S3 transfer acceleration, Everlaw ingests data even more quickly to the platform.

Our proprietary processing engine rapidly ingests 400,000+ documents per hour and automatically performs error-handling, deduplication, deNISTing, OCR, and imaging. Everlaw’s incredibly fast processing minimizes lag time between initial document upload and review.

The visual search query builder allows users to stack and nest metadata and other document properties to easily construct complex searches. Everlaw’s search leverages Lucene indexing, which is so fast that it returns sub-second results, even across millions of documents or with the most complex of search strings.

Everlaw automatically updates indexes on the backend, removing the headache of having to constantly build and update indexes due to rolling data loads. Re-running search indexes are a thing of the past since hit count updates will be automatically reflected in search term reports.

Expedited Document Review

Everlaw is designed with nothing to slow you down–users spend less time waiting for documents to render or tagging them, and more time finding the facts that matter most in a case. With ⅛ second page viewing and continuous scrolling when viewing multi-page documents, Everlaw’s proprietary PDF Viewer is one of a kind. The zero footprint viewer loads large files with ease, instead of freezing or crashing the browser window as is common with less sophisticated document viewers. Shortkeys, coding presets, and a customizable review interface all further help reviewers more efficiently review documents.

Want to Learn More?

Everlaw automates or streamlines every step of the ediscovery process, from uploading documents all the way through to production but we’re not just committed to speed. We also value innovation, security, transparency, and respect for our users. If you are interested in learning more about the rest of the principles and how they influence our product development, please download the whitepaper “A Critical Evaluation of Ediscovery Vendors.” To speak with us or schedule a demo to see some of this in action, contact us today.