How XBundle Untangles Massive Cases
In complex litigation, where vast quantities of data may stretch back years or even decades, the ability to process and analyze evidence quickly and accurately is absolutely vital. UK litigation support services provider XBundle has been partnering with London Silver Circle law firm Macfarlanes since 2017, relying exclusively on Everlaw to master huge data sets, complex data files, and fast-moving timelines.
Everlaw’s ability to ingest a terabyte of data per day, making it fully searchable and indexed within 24 hours, lets their legal teams swiftly identify and prioritize the most relevant documents no matter how big or tangled a matter.
In a recent example, when Macfarlanes launched a class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 550 sub-postmasters in the UK Post Office Horizon scandal, Everlaw’s powerful edisclosure solution played a crucial role in uncovering key evidence. The information helped expose the wrongful convictions of hundreds of postal workers.
“You can do things on Everlaw which I know other platforms would just fall over and collapse on.”
Uncovering the Truth with Blisteringly Fast Edisclosure Technology
Macfarlanes is a leading corporate law firm offering elite client services, including assistance with the most consequential litigation and investigations.
Lawyer and legal services expert Mark Agombar had formed XBundle Ltd. in 2016, building a team of experts in digital forensics, data collection, project management, and other specialties to provide what he calls a complete “litigation support concierge service to legal teams.” To do so, he needed the best tools.
“For processing data, viewing data, and searching data, Everlaw is absolutely blisteringly fast,” Agombar said at Everlaw Summit ‘24. “You can do things on Everlaw which I know other platforms would just fall over and collapse on.”
In the Post Office case, Macfarlanes and XBundle used Everlaw to process historical data of the 12 primary plaintiffs for insights that would help surface the truth and eventually exonerate many of the workers.
Bringing Powerful Edisclosure Tech to the Post Master Case
From 1999 to 2015, the UK Post Office Limited wrongly prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters on charges of false accounting, fraud, and theft. The actual fault lay with a defective point-of-sale computer system, called Horizon. Post Office officials insisted the software was not at fault, and prosecuted more than 900 subpostmasters for “thefts” that were, in fact, computer errors.
Even after it came to light that the workers had committed no crimes, the Post Office denied any wrongdoing. It instead tried to conceal errors in its systems. The result for many of the victims was prison time and financial ruin.
Everlaw’s speed and the ability to handle great complexity were absolutely essential to gathering critical evidence, Agombar said. The challenges were considerable. The legal team needed to:
Process data efficiently: The edisclosure platform’s speed was vital in processing large volumes of data, especially historical files from Office 2003 and 2005. The platform was able to upload a terabyte of data per day, making it fully searchable and indexed within 24 hours. This allowed the legal team to quickly identify relevant documents and files that were crucial to the case.
Reconstruct key evidence: Using the available data, the team was able to rebuild databases and analyze customer support call logs. This evidence played a pivotal role in the wrongful prosecutions.
Uncover gaps in disclosure: The legal team was able to efficiently use search, tagging, and analytics to pinpoint the documents they needed. The combination of fast data processing and targeted searches helped identify gaps in disclosure and made it possible to hold the organization accountable.
Ultimately, 700 wrongly convicted postal workers were exonerated thanks to the litigation and a public inquiry. “The case has been pivotal in exposing one of the largest miscarriages of justice in English legal history,” Ambogar said.
Lawyers Embrace Intuitive Tools That Evolve with Their Needs
“Lawyers aren’t technologists,” Agombar noted. Which is why they like Everlaw. “It’s extremely intuitive. They can pick up what they want to do very quickly and get to the evidence and the documents they want quite quickly.”
"They want to be able to develop functions and features users want. That’s what makes Everlaw stand out.”
With Everlaw, “quickly” means a processing speed of 900,000 documents per hour and review speeds of 86 documents per hour. “I can regularly process a terabyte of data a day, have it uploaded, have it fully searchable, indexed and fully imaged within a 24-hour period, and that's just unheard of within any other platform,” Agombar said.
He praised the evolution of Everlaw’s capabilities in the eight years since Macfarlanes and XBundle began working together, and credited it to a fundamental focus on the customer.
“They want to hear how they can make that user experience better, and they want to be able to develop functions and features users want,” he said. “That’s what makes Everlaw stand out.”
The legal teams are excited about EverlawAI Assistant Coding Suggestions — the large language model-powered feature that helps expedite document coding — as it helps them better understand their cases early on.
“You feed the briefing note into the platform, Everlaw then uses it to look at the corpus of documents, and it will suggest which documents are not only relevant, but also what issue they respond to,” Agombar said. “It helps us, as the litigation support team, to get the documents to the lawyers quickly, and I think it's going to help with the collaboration between the technology teams and the legal teams.”
Delivering Stronger Outcomes with the Right Talent and Tools
Forward-thinking litigators and their partners are using advanced edisclosure solutions for the processing speeds, powerful search capability, and user-friendly analytics features that point them straight to key facts. Practitioners relying on Everlaw know they can quickly turn a massive document collection into a manageable source of usable insights on which to build a strong case.
The result is a better results for clients and a more powerful brand for law firms in a hyper-competitive legal field.
