Why United Airlines Brings Discovery Work In-House
For Paul Noonan at United Airlines, relying on legacy approaches to discovery is no longer an option — and hasn’t been for years. The reasons are simple: litigation data volumes are growing, outside counsel costs keep climbing, and the returns on centralizing discovery capabilities in-house are too compelling to ignore.
Headquartered in Chicago, United Airlines operates an extensive domestic and international route network across the United States and six continents with more destinations than any other airline.
“I’m a big proponent of insourcing as much discovery work as possible,” said Noonan, who joined the U.S. air carrier in spring of 2020 to streamline its ediscovery operations and is now Managing Counsel of Ediscovery and Information Governance. “There’s a lot you can do in-house that’s fairly straightforward and that starts to reclaim hours and reduce reliance on outside providers.”
Today, his team uses Everlaw to manage key stages on the left side of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, or EDRM. These include data collection and processing as well as early case assessment, known as ECA, which helps the team quickly assess the scope and relevance of data early in the process, guiding decisions on the direction of the case. The team adheres to rules around culling minimums for reducing data sets before sending work out for further review. Outside counsel and other providers are brought in strategically to work within the platform rather than in disconnected systems.
The result is faster turnaround on investigations, clearer visibility into costs, and real savings on every matter.
“Having your own instance of Everlaw will immediately eliminate a lot of fixed costs for every single case you do,” Noonan said. “It's a really easy economic case to make.”
Running More Effective Collections and Productions
When Noonan joined United Airlines, the company relied on a patchwork of disconnected tools and outsourced much of its discovery work.
Gathering data was a significant undertaking. As collaboration tools like Teams and Zoom gained traction, the department had to adapt quickly to manage the explosion in digital data and new formats.
“Teams chats are very difficult to deal with,” Noonan said. “They’re like tiny individual emails that lack context. Without the right system, you are essentially not investigating them at all.”
Productions were another challenge, with vendors often requesting 48 hours to complete their work. Addressing any issues that arose often took additional time, which required careful planning to stay on schedule.
Everlaw solved these issues. Noonan said productions now take a couple of hours, sometimes less. “If someone changes their mind, it’s easy to rerun productions,” he added. “Problems are simple to fix.”
His team is now able to handle collections, processing, and productions in-house with speed and precision. When they engage outside counsel, it’s after voluminous data sets have been culled to just the documents that are germane to the matter at hand. This reduces overall litigation costs.
"You're going to get good results, useful results, back far faster than you ever did before if you do this yourself."
Bringing ediscovery in-house has been critical to streamlining of litigation and investigations workflows. “As we refine the process further, I think we’ll be able to manage the entire ediscovery lifecycle in-house within a couple of years.”
Understanding the Most Important Information at the Outset
Everlaw helps legal professionals move from data to decisions in a fraction of the time it takes without the benefit of an in-house platform.
Using traditional methods, it could take weeks just to access the first round of data, Noonan recalled. By then, the urgency faded and key context was lost. An internally managed platform, by contrast, delivers actionable information almost immediately. Everlaw’s Early Case Assessment workspaces help to narrow the review universe on average by 74%. Within hours, Noonan said he is able to identify the most important documents — or at least get a clear picture of how the case is likely to unfold.
Even if there’s no “smoking gun,” that early insight helps the United Airlines legal team and its outside counsel shape case strategy, guiding decisions around whether to move toward settlement or continue to litigate. Instead of reacting to information that surfaces late in the game, they can proactively steer the case from day one.
“You will always be better informed about every case you have if you have a tool like Everlaw compared with the old way, where you're always going to be chasing data and chasing deadlines,” Noonan said. “This will get you out in front of everything consistently.”
Fueling Company-Wide Adoption with an Intuitive Design
Legal professionals often worry that introducing new technology will create more work rather than reducing it. It’s a natural response. One way to overcome it is with tools that are user friendly.
What drew Noonan to Everlaw was just that: it is remarkably easy to use. He said that while the underlying technology is robust, it’s the front-end simplicity that won him over. Everlaw makes searches straightforward to execute, coding panels are simple to set up, and the interface clearly shows what work has been done — no engineering degree required.
That makes cross-departmental training easier and supports enterprise-wide adoption and more seamless collaboration, Noonan said. Investigations teams, paralegals, in-house counsel, and law firm attorneys are all able to hit the ground running.
“Everlaw is very intuitive. Everybody likes using it better than anything they’ve used before of a similar nature,” he said. “Once you’ve used it, it’s like riding a bike, you really never forget how to use it.”
For a lean legal team under pressure to do more with less, that level of accessibility is a strategic advantage.
“You will always be better informed about every case you have if you have a tool like Everlaw."
Bringing Control Back to the Legal Function
Noonan is part of a new generation of in-house leaders who are redefining ediscovery for today’s complex demands.
The explosion in data volumes, rising law firm billing rates, and delays that often come with third-party help all make the work of resource-strapped departments unsustainable. For United Airlines, these challenges are better managed in-house with the right discovery technology. Using Everlaw has meant greater control over data and process while reducing reliance on outside providers.
“I know it’s the easiest thing in the world for legal departments to just do what they've always done and pull down data and ship it off to somebody else to deal with it,” Noonan said. “But you're going to get good results, useful results, back far faster than you ever did before if you do this yourself.”
To learn how other corporate clients and law firms are handling the toughest litigation and investigations challenges, check out our customer success stories.
