A Construction Litigation Leader Tackles Its Most Complex Cases with Everlaw
Today’s biggest construction projects are undertakings of massive complexity. When everything goes right, they result in the buildings that shape our skylines and the infrastructure upon which society runs. When they go wrong, the aftermath can be almost as complicated as the projects themselves. The law firms in this field prepare each day to take on tasks like these, and bring valuable construction litigation expertise to their clients.
With cases that often involve millions of documents being produced in discovery, including complex file types like CAD and DGN files, ediscovery requires the full attention of the attorneys working on these construction litigation cases. The attorneys work hard to meet the needs of their clients, and when it comes to finding an ediscovery platform, they need one that could match their output. Modern technology has made it possible for firms to stand out among competitors, and innovative ediscovery platforms have played an essential part.
Our customer, a boutique construction litigation powerhouse, found in Everlaw an ediscovery platform that went beyond their basic needs and brought the power to manage document review in-house, providing the ultimate game-changer for their clients.
Handling Massive Matters at Scale
Construction litigation is a diverse area of law that can encompass everything from contract disputes to design negligence to construction defects and more. Discovery in these cases can be a long, drawn-out process involving multiple parties, complex file types, and large amounts of data, which can be difficult to review and search.
Keeping up with the volume of documents and different file types that come with these construction cases was a high priority for this firm’s attorneys when searching for a suitable ediscovery vendor.
With multiple matters that had millions of documents being produced, there was a need not just for an ediscovery platform that could effectively process all that data, but that could consistently outperform itself over time and continue matching the firm’s ambition.
With industry-leading processing speeds that offer the ability to ingest 900,000 documents per hour, users never have to worry about overloading the Everlaw platform with too much data. While the industry standard upload time is two seconds per document, Everlaw’s is just a fraction of that, at 0.2 seconds.
Being able to load documents for reviewers 192% faster than the industry standard makes all the difference in a fast-moving case. A 1.8 second improvement, spread out across 1 million documents, results in a time savings of 500 hours. For cases where millions of documents have been produced by various parties and non-parties, the productivity impacts can be profound.
“It’s not so much on the smaller matters, but on the bigger matters where you have such a large volume of documents, that the ease of use and the speed of Everlaw really shines,” an associate at the firm said. They’ve spent hundreds of hours on the platform, and been at the forefront of utilizing modern ediscovery technology to help create more efficient processes at the firm.
“We've used other ESI platforms before,” the associate said. “Some of the problems we run into is the speed of the platform. Searching for and loading documents on other ediscovery platforms is not nearly as quick as it is on Everlaw.”
Adapting to the Challenge of Construction Litigation Data
Construction law in particular can be a different beast with regards to the sizes and types of files that come up in the ediscovery process. CAD files specifically can contain 2-D and 3-D images of architectural plans or renderings that are difficult for many systems to process, yet often play important roles during ediscovery. There are DGN, DWG, and DXF files as well, each presenting their own unique challenges for ediscovery platforms to process.
As the associate said, “Everlaw supports an enormous number of file types. Even the file types that are not supported, we have no problem producing them natively through Everlaw, which is another benefit.”
Presenting complex file types in a way that’s clear and consistent is a game-changer for increasing efficiency in ediscovery. After all, when you’re involved in construction cases that can involve billions of dollars, you should be able to access and search through all of your data on demand.
“I think Everlaw provides a competitive advantage making the review of documents as easy as it can be,” the associate said.
Managing a Review Team Quickly and With Ease
Contract review attorneys can help provide necessary assistance when it comes to large and complex cases, but getting them trained on an ediscovery platform while in the middle of trial preparation can be burdensome. Any time spent waiting around could make the difference in finding the information that will determine the outcome of a case.
Combining helpful tools and features with simple functionality means these attorneys can hit the ground running. Flexibility and scalability might just be buzz words to some, but they were key to ushering the firm into the next technology-forward generation. Everlaw was able to help fill both of those needs while creating added savings along the way.
“Contract attorney review is dramatically reduced with Everlaw, which provides a lot of savings,” the associate said. “Everlaw offers an ease of use where you can tell someone, ‘Okay, here's your username, your password, go search for documents,’ and they don't need hours and hours of training.”
Being able to train contract attorneys quickly, or even eliminate the need for so many of them in the first place, can help push a firm through the thick of intense litigation.
This boutique firm knows better than anyone that when you have the right tools, no task is too large. With a platform like Everlaw, the bigger the case, the better you’re able to leverage those tools to your advantage.
“Everlaw has paid off the most on the matters where we are reviewing and producing large volumes of data, including cases where we are reviewing five million, ten million, or even more documents in the Everlaw database,” the associate said.
That scalability was important when it came to the number of actual attorneys on the platform, too. “We’ve had cases that required over 100 contract review attorneys working in the Everlaw platform at a given time, and the ease of use has made it simple to get those attorneys trained and onboarded,” the associate said. Capabilities like this helped the firm grow their operations quickly when starting a new case, wasting no time getting up to speed.
Reaping the Benefits of In-House Expertise
With matters of such size, you don’t necessarily want all of that information walking out the door with a third-party vendor. Controlling your own uploads and keeping your data in-house makes for a faster, more efficient, and secure ediscovery process. This was an immediate benefit to the Everlaw platform that attorneys at the firm appreciated from the start.
“The person who's loading our documents is a couple of doors down from me, instead of maybe half a country away,” the associate said. “It's a much easier and more straightforward process. If I have a question on how documents were loaded, I don't have to write an email, I just go to the person three doors down.” This allows clients to fully put their trust in you, and helps to cut off any challenges or difficulties the moment they arise.
The Storybuilder feature on Everlaw has been used heavily by the firm to work with clients no matter their location. It lets users craft case narratives, digitize depositions, highlight key testimony, and manage the entire litigation process from start to finish through a suite of post-review tools, while still keeping data secured in-house.
“We’ve used Storybuilder for depositions, mediation, and other matters,” the associate said. “There have been times when we’ve had over 20 people working together simultaneously in a shared environment. The Storybuilder feature is a collaborative tool that’s been very effective in advancing cases.”
Going With the Best
Helping teams stay competitive in an evolving legal landscape is just part of the real value a modern ediscovery platform can provide. This construction litigation firm trusts Everlaw with their data because they know the platform will support them with the tools needed to help build a winning argument.
Partnerships like this can transform the legal market and open up the competitive landscape to all types of firms and stakeholders. Valuing suggestions, incorporating feedback, and accepting constructive criticism provides an opportunity for growth on the part of both firms and vendors to make these products better.
“The more we’ve used Everlaw,” the associate said, “the more we've seen it's really a superior platform, a superior tool. We're always going to use the best tools.”
