Solo Practitioner Stephen Lee Leverages Everlaw to Level the Playing Field
In the early days of legal practice, a lawyer’s strength was often measured by the height of the paper stacks on their desk and the number of associates available to carry them. Victory in complex cases were often wars of attrition, won by the side with the most boots on the ground to sift through endless bankers' boxes.
But as the legal world has moved from the filing cabinet to the cloud, a new era has emerged—one where the solo practitioner can stand toe-to-toe with the government and the largest law firms. The equalizer isn't just a deeper understanding of the law, but the strategic application of technology that can synthesize a digital ocean of data into a single, winning narrative.
This shift is where attorney Stephen Lee has thrived for much of his career. Based in Chicago, Lee has built a practice that feels less like a traditional law office and more like a high-tech investigative unit. By blending the instincts of a veteran journalist with the institutional knowledge of a former federal prosecutor, he has redefined what it means to be a solo practitioner in the age of big data litigation.
The Journalist’s Lens on Ediscovery
Before Lee started his legal career, he was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News and the Chicago Tribune. In the newsroom, he learned how to explain complicated topics to a wide audience, and that details and data can be just as compelling as what someone says, if not more.
When he transitioned to the law—first at Debevoise & Plimpton and then during an 11-year tenure as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois—he brought that same investigative rigor with him.
Now, as the founder of his own defense firm, Lee focuses on some of the most complex and high-stakes litigation there is, including criminal charges involving federal health care fraud and the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. These are cases where the government doesn't just present a few key documents; they dump a digital universe of encrypted messages, WhatsApp threads, and years of billing data onto the defense.
As a solo practitioner, Lee cannot afford to spend weeks manually reviewing documents. He uses Everlaw to act as his digital force multiplier. By leveraging advanced search, data analytics, and targeted searches, he can ingest massive datasets and immediately begin identifying the documents that will form the backbone of his defense. This allows him to focus on the high-level strategy that wins cases, rather than getting lost in the weeds of administrative document management.
“Everlaw is pretty intuitive,” Lee said. “The platform makes it easy to find what you need, especially with all the filtering that we were doing to show my client what the government’s case was and what really happened. It makes a lot of sense.”
Navigating the Tide of Massive Enforcement
The scale of modern federal investigations is often defined by wide-reaching, multi-jurisdictional initiatives that cast an incredibly wide net. These sweeping enforcement actions can sometimes sweep up well-meaning individuals alongside those with criminal intent. For Lee, matters stemming from these massive federal operations represent the ultimate challenge in discovery management. During one case that went to trial, it immediately became clear that he would have to out-organize the prosecution to make his case.
“We knew what happened from our point of view, but we had to figure out what the government believed happened and where they went wrong in their investigation,” Lee said. “They ran a pretty shoddy investigation, and they quickly made up their minds to charge my client and wouldn’t back down.”
This was especially important because Lee’s client planned to testify. People charged in criminal cases do not have to testify, but choosing to can help jurors understand what really happened from the defendant’s perspective, which is often the key issue in a criminal case.
Preparing to testify is a daunting task for any lawyer or client, and the client must be able to explain incidents and conversations from years prior with as much precision as possible to help the jury understand their story and to survive cross-examination.
Everlaw became a big part of how Lee and the client prepared. Rather than handing his client a stack of paper that would inevitably be re-tabbed and reorganized as the trial progressed, Lee gave him direct access to a dedicated project within the Everlaw platform.
“I thought, ‘Wait a second. If I make a project and put all the documents there in Everlaw, I can just teach my client how to navigate the platform, and he can review all the documents on his computer, so if I need to update something, I can do it easily,’” Lee said. “I had the master chronology, and rather than me emailing him this report or that report, he could just see everything in Everlaw.”
This allowed the client to log in from his own computer and review his own history—his emails, messages, and calendar—in a way that was intuitive and searchable. The client used Everlaw to prepare himself with and without Lee, and was better equipped to explain the context of every document with confidence during trial. Ultimately, the client testified for several days about every document or incident that the government had brought up in its case-in-chief. At the end of the case, the client was acquitted of every charge.
The Solo Practitioner as a Legal Powerhouse
The success of Lee’s practice serves as a blueprint for the future of the legal profession. For a solo practitioner, the goal is no longer to be the biggest firm in the room, but the most agile.
Lee has replaced expensive physical storage and manual labor with a platform in Everlaw that scales with his needs. This allows him to take on some of the most complex health care fraud cases in the country with the confidence that he can manage the discovery process as effectively as any large firm or government agency.
For example, in another recent case, the government had two lawyers, two agents, and a paralegal on their side, with just Lee and his client on the other. Lee was able to use Everlaw during the trial to respond quickly to the government’s case without any additional help, including showing how the government had taken emails and text messages out of context. The case ended with the client’s acquittal.
Whether he is securing an acquittal in a telemedicine case or overturning a conviction in the Seventh Circuit, Lee’s focus remains the same: using technology to help ensure that the jury hears what really happened.
“In this day and age, we're drowning in discovery and drowning in too much information,” Lee said. “A big part of an attorneys’ job is trying to organize all of that and sift through what we really need. I think using technology to organize the data and try to get some handle on it is really important.”
