Am Law 200 Firm Leads in Litigation Through Difference-Making Ediscovery
When a law firm boasts of having hundreds of attorneys spread across a dozen offices as a point of pride, it’s unlikely to also conjure images of excellent customer support and high-level attention to detail. However, for our client, an Am Law 200 firm that regularly takes on complex litigation matters, that is precisely what makes them special.
As a large full-service law firm, they go out of their way to ensure that size doesn’t get in the way of exceeding client expectations and forging long-lasting relationships.
“I support a lot of the different departments with their technology and ediscovery needs,” an ediscovery and litigation support manager at the firm said. “That means helping attorneys with everything from different ESI platforms to forensics extractions, using the client's Office 365 email to do email extractions, and more. It can also entail things like trial ediscovery preparation or serving as a trial director.”
This type of flexibility is what’s needed by today’s biggest firms to remain agile as they scale. And even though the firm has grown to dominate litigation, that doesn’t mean they’ve lost the hunger to continue providing top-tier legal services to their clients, which these days also means staying current on the technological landscape.
The Evolution of Ediscovery
Although ediscovery has evolved over the years, it remains the core part of legal work for organizations of all sizes. With over a decade of experience, the ediscovery and litigation support manager has been present for much of ediscovery’s evolution.
“I remember when ediscovery was very basic. The tools were practically archaic,” he said. “Over the years, however, they’ve gotten better. We were blessed with analytics, which eventually turned into AI, which is the big new technology. There are many features available now that weren't back when I started.”
One of the major benefits gained by these technological advances has been the ability for firms to take control of the ediscovery process and carry it out completely in-house. This is something the firm has taken full advantage of through Everlaw’s cloud-based platform. They’re able to collaborate and edit documents, and communicate with team members directly in the platform, no matter where they’re located.
“Some of the benefits of doing ediscovery in-house is that the firm has control over the time range and the time period to do productions or reviews,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said. “We can actually work with the attorneys and the paralegals. And in Everlaw, we’re able to use features that allow us to communicate and make changes in real time and collaborate so that we can get the reviews done more efficiently, and get the productions out quicker.”
Effective Trial Preparation with Storybuilder
One of those features is Storybuilder.
As a collaborative narrative building and trial preparation repository, Storybuilder helps team members craft case narratives, consolidate work product, and organize their most important documents in one place.
“Storybuilder allows me to create a case and work through it until the end of its life, which is after trial,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said. “It lets me work with the attorneys, create witnesses, create documents that are associated with witnesses, and have a timeline. I can produce documents and an exhibit list at a moment's notice, no matter the size.”
With such a hands-on feature at your disposal, teams are able to work together to tell the stories that will make a difference in the case, pinpoint key testimony, organize timelines, and build bulletproof depositions that can withstand even the most intense scrutiny. This can also lead to major time savings.
“Everlaw allows me to use Storybuilder to produce documents and an exhibit list at a moment's notice no matter the size,” he continued. “I've used it to produce an exhibit list of over 900 exhibits in just about 15 minutes. That allows me to not only be efficient, but it also gives the attorneys time to review before we have to submit it.”
Feature Requests that Encourage Growth
This spirit of collaboration even extends to Everlaw’s support team, which the ediscovery and litigation support manager views as a major difference maker in the Everlaw experience.
“The support that I receive from Everlaw is always awesome,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said. “I've used support from other ediscovery platforms, and a lot of times it's either hard to get in touch with the support department, or they get back to you over a week after you’ve requested their help. With Everlaw support, when I have a call, they're either able to assist me at that same moment, or they reach out to the engineering team and I get an email regarding my issue within a couple of hours.”
Not only does the Everlaw support team offer customers exceptional service and response times, but they also encourage customers to give active feedback about the platform. Customers can submit feature requests detailing things they’d like to see incorporated into the platform, and many of them actually get built.
“One of the greatest things I like about Everlaw is the feature requests,” he continued. “They work with you specifically when you have ideas, and those ideas eventually blossom into new features. Allowing feature requests from all of their clients allows Everlaw to grow, improve the product, and listen to the community, which makes working in the platform both pleasant and easy.”
Remaining Compliant with Cases of Every Size
Those features and constant updates can make the difference in your case, regardless of whether you’re combing through terabytes of data or just a few gigabytes.
“I recommend Everlaw for any case size because it doesn't matter how large or small the case is,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said.
This is particularly relevant when it comes to productions for those cases, in which federal and state compliance requirements have to be met. Metadata and other information has to be preserved and retained, all under a specific set of guidelines.
“With the way the federal and state rules are these days, there are requirements that have to be met,” he continued. “If you don't produce things the correct way, that can have ramifications later down the line. It's better to be compliant than not compliant. Using Everlaw, we’re able to not only ingest the client's documents and obtain all the metadata and information we need from those documents, but we're able to produce it in a manner that’s compliant with the court rules.”
This can even provide a competitive advantage over the other side, when you’re able to have all that information tagged correctly and don’t have to worry about compliance. Even more, it allows you to dive into what’s produced by the other side to immediately start looking for holes in their case.
“Everlaw gives me an advantage in not only looking at productions that we receive from opposite counsel, or for things like gaps in email time ranges or how document structures are kept in the usual course of business,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said, “but we’re also able to see the folder structure. We're able to see if the opposite party left anything out. It's easier to identify noncompliance, but at the same time, it's also easier to identify compliance in terms of looking at your own documents and making sure everything in the file path is kept in the correct manner.”
A Platform That Makes Lives Easier
When you have a million and one things to worry about, knowing your ediscovery needs are taken care of can be a real luxury.
“Everlaw makes my life a lot easier,” the ediscovery and litigation support manager said. “It allows me to not only work wherever I am, whether that’s another state or another country, but it also allows me to work seamlessly through any of the documents that we receive from clients, and be able to help them in real time.”
This sort of commitment to clients is just part of what’s made the firm into what they are today, and underscores the seriousness with which they view their place as a leading litigation law firm. As the firm continues to grow and evolve in the modern technological age, having a platform like Everlaw will ensure they remain at the forefront of innovation and keep setting the bar for client service.
