Benesch Reduces Ediscovery Costs as Firm-Wide User Engagement Soars
Their Story
Benesch is an AmLaw 200 business law firm and limited liability partnership with offices in Cleveland, Chicago, Columbus, San Francisco, Wilmington, Hackensack, and Shanghai. The firm is known for providing highly sophisticated legal services to national and international clients that include public and private, middle market and emerging companies, as well as private equity funds, entrepreneurs, not-for-profit organizations, trusts, and estates.
The Problem
With overwhelming volumes of data and increasing complexity of file types, Benesch was struggling to meet the ediscovery demands of a hyper-growth firm. The legacy, on-premise system that had been supporting the practice not only demanded a significant manual effort from the Benesch team but also often resulted in costly invoices for processing. Worse, the solution failed to provide all the capabilities that the firm needed, increasing their dependence on costly, third-party solutions.
Clients have no considerations about the cost of Everlaw. They love the fact that it’s basically single line item pricing that makes budgeting very simple and easy. We’re able to put together budgets that have more realistic estimates for what we’re going to spend on ediscovery than we ever were before.”
– Don McCann,
Litigation Support Manager, Benesch
As the legacy technology continued to falter within the firm, adoption rates among attorneys fell and dissatisfaction grew. There was a growing concern that the system was beginning to hinder their ability to service clients and operate efficiently.
IT leaders at Benesch determined that a cloud-based technology would better suit their growing firm by allowing them to scale easily without the significant time and money investment of a an on-premise solution. Scale was priority #1 but other criteria that guided the evaluation of vendors were as follows:
Transparency: Cost is an ongoing concern for Benesch. Many solutions in the industry have misleading pricing models, charging nickels and dimes for everything, which not only results in surprisingly expensive invoices but also makes it difficult to budget.
Ease of use: Attorneys at Benesch historically refused to adopt bad technology
Innovation: The team was determined to partner with a vendor that had an eye on the future—building solutions that not only met their current demands but that also showed an ability to meet future needs.
The Everlaw Solution
Concerns about the ability to scale were addressed immediately as the Benesch team evaluated the self-service data uploading and processing capabilities on Everlaw. Everlaw also quickly addressed transparency concerns by offering a standard, straightforward pricing model, making it easy for the team at Benesch to budget future projects and improve client relations by eliminating surprise line items during invoicing.
Benesch was also impressed by how easy it was to get started on Everlaw—attorneys felt like they could easily navigate the platform with almost no training. Lastly, Benesch attorneys also identified the narrative-building tools in Everlaw as key differentiators and evidence of forward-thinking innovation.
Results
Since adopting Everlaw, Benesch has seen wide adoption across the firm and a significant reduction in both time and cost associated with managing data and performing discovery. Use cases have expanded beyond simple ediscovery to include more complex matters, such as trial preparation.
Prior to working on Everlaw, we had not experienced a workflow that included tagging and identifying documents during review, organizing documents according to subject, time, and importance, and connecting a story all within the same platform. Everlaw gets us to the best outcome quicker than any other solution.
– Andrew Fiorella, Partner and Ediscovery Group Chair, Benesch
Everlaw has led to even more cross-functional harmony at Benesch—both inside and outside the firm—as partners use the software to collaborate with other attorneys, contractors, and clients. “The team at Everlaw is interested in working with us,” said Don McCann, Litigation Support Manager at Benesch, “not just as a potential client, but as a collaborator. They are looking for customers that can help make their product better, in the same way that they are trying to make our lives easier.”
