The No-Brainer by Winlock Brown, Esq.

Every month I encounter colleagues from smaller law firms who struggle to manage some aspect of e-discovery and litigation support case management. They know the standard database products and want to install them and manage their cases like they hear everyone else does.

Frequently they purchase an industry-standard, over-the-counter product with the belief that all their needs will be met within the software suite, only to find that special needs arise during their case that necessitates purchasing more complex additional software to make the process work properly.

My colleagues are often annoyed that their platform of choice is harder to learn to run administratively than they thought and often underestimate the learning curve for making their software dance to the beat of their ESI Order. Rarely does the attorney or IT colleague truly grasp the amount of actual time it takes to process data to the specifications needed for their case. Even worse, they run into IT issues quickly due to surprise volumes of information that can arise on a case out of the blue. Software that should work in a virtual setup hogs memory and drags down the whole network. Data volumes increase faster than IT can increase safe storage. No one has time to figure out the best plan; it’s always a matter of jumping through flaming hoops to get things done. There’s never enough time or people, and everyone gets frustrated.

Rare is the case in a standalone database that does not need some assistance from either a utility or a full imaging suite to complete production. The recommendation is to budget the investment in an image manipulation suite along with the database solution to be certain you can handle the mundane re-numbering problem as well as the more difficult doc-split, Group 4 tif, and renumber all at the same time at a reasonable speed.

So, why do we continue to fight this fight? Is it because we think there’s nothing better? Not true. There are options now that incorporate data processing, de-duping, loading and most processing in the use of the database. There is no emergency requirement to learn how to run the processing program or the image manipulation program. Your data is processed and added to the database at your command, then you control it as you wish. You can see the processing error report and get a hash report, but you don’t have to worry about figuring out how to handle the different sources or how to get the special program to output in a format that your database will manage best. It’s simply completed for you.

Once your data is processed and loaded, you can manipulate it as you need. You can upload and download, tag, folder, and produce. You can add fields, add users, or delete either or both. Search by concept, keyword, standard Boolean search or root around in the foreign languages you have in your data set. Folder your searches and assign them to be reviewed by a select individual or set of users. Monitor the progress and export a report of what’s been reviewed and what’s been changed over a period of time. See what documents have been redacted or tagged. Look at the work flow of your users. It’s all the good stuff.

For a smaller law firm, this option is a no-brainer. Small firms are finding themselves in the middle of larger, complex cases more often these days. Market economics are pushing price competition which smaller firms are winning. However, a smaller firm may not have the experience to realistically forecast personnel and IT costs associated with winning the new clients and cases. The terrific value that they’ve always offered with current staff simply must continue if they are to remain competitive. Sadly, that often leaves their support staff gasping for air as they try to manage the increased demands of more complex litigation and advanced electronic discovery. There is no better way to fend off the need for increased head count and capital spending.

Large firms and companies may accept that tens of thousands of dollars a month in hosting and consulting fees are required. There are, however, new offerings meant to address your specific needs. If you are a busy associate, paralegal, IT manager or partner at a smaller firm, you would benefit from investigating the options available that offer financially accessible all-in-one options. The best options will combine cost benefits, service offerings, repeatable results, and user-friendly software to serve your requirements.

One such coherent processing/review offering is cpDocRev by codeMantra. cpDocRev offers an intuitive interface to speed learning and usage, transcript management, comprehensive search capabilities that include concept, semantic, metadata, and full Boolean searching, administrative workflow tools, tagging, foldering, and annotation, along with fully inclusive self-import and export/production capabilities including Bates numbering. There’s a universal viewer to see native documents without owning the source software and redaction capability to mark up documents that need information removed. The system automatically tracks changes, redactions, monitors access, and allows granular control to the administrative user. It is also Unicode compliant and handles multiple foreign languages, including searching in those languages.

One of the most important features is the administrative control enjoyed by the client user. Create new cases and clients, load data, add users, limit access, track review stats, create and export reports, do productions- all on your own schedule. You don’t need to hire someone new to learn or manage the back-end administrative complexities of the program. If you need help, support is just a click away.

Your large data sets are uploaded via FTP access and can include native files or load files and data from standard file formats such as Dii, LFP, CSV, XML, and Dat. Native files that are imported are automatically de-duped, hashed, and processed to have metadata and text extracted. Error reports allow easy tracking of difficult files. Tiff or pdf images imported are automatically run through the optical character recognition engine to provide OCR, saving the need to either pre-process or export OCR from other programs. Exporting to tiff or pdf is included in the standard flat price and is easily done through production sets, saving tons of money and headaches from having to either buy a specialized image processing program or having to send the data out.

Your reviewers will feel comfortable with their tasks using the expandable information panes in the review module. They can access the system using any standard browser, allowing easy remote access from any location.

With transcript management and the ability to handle audio and video files, the cpDocRev system has many advanced features to facilitate preparing your case for trial. You don’t have to worry if the case explodes in size either. The system can expand to accommodate your increased needs without major cost expenditures for you.

All-inclusive options meant for the smaller case such as cpDocRev are sure to become the logical choices for the small firm. With easy use and access, robust capabilities, and inter-operability with standard systems, the limited cost of such a choice is an easy justification to a client. If more sophisticated capabilities are required, then you control the ability to export and import as needed, without incurring the huge setup and management costs associated with the big names meant for huge cases. Start with the solution tailor-made for your situation, and you may find that it’s all you ever need.