For Harness IP, Everlaw Powers a Fast New World
The discovery process is the backbone of legal practice today. For the vast majority of disputes, discovery determines the outcome – and that outcome is either a beneficial settlement, backed by key evidence, or not. Yet for many law firms, handling the ever-growing needs of electronic discovery, with its booming document volumes, ever-expanding data types, and unforgiving deadlines, presents an incredible challenge.
Should the needs of modern ediscovery outgrow the capabilities of a firm’s tools, the impacts can be daunting.
“We were often behind, we didn’t have the technology that we should have, and we were moving to the cloud, but we did not know who we were going to select,” recalls Penny Jones-Magee, Litigation Support Specialist for Harness IP, an elite international firm dedicated exclusively to intellectual property law. The team needed software that would be able to handle today’s data and empower their attorneys to access it quickly and confidently. Penny recently sat down with Everlaw to discuss her firm’s approach to ediscovery and the impact of choosing a modern platform.
Harness IP was not alone in realizing its existing platform had fallen behind. Regardless of specialty, all firms feel the pressure created by rapidly evolving data formats and tighter budgets. The volume of discoverable data is exploding, and when an ediscovery platform can’t handle the load, attorneys and paralegals are forced to fill the gaps.
With more than 100 attorneys and IP professionals spread across four states, Harness IP represents a global clientele. They needed software that could speedily ingest massive amounts of data, accommodate translation for multiple languages, accelerate the review process, and provide seamless collaboration throughout the life cycle of a case.
The firm needed a tool that would not just meet the baseline requirements of the discovery process, but that would transform their approach to discovery and give the organization a competitive advantage. Naturally, the most advanced security authorizations were a must.
Everlaw met that brief.
Handling the Hardest Files
Intellectual property disputes such as copyright, trademark, and patent infringement cases typically involve a wide range of data. “I have a lot of CAD files, a lot of Excel files, drawings, certain document types that were not easy to work with in the other platform,” says Penny. “But Everlaw has been able to manage all of those.” Improved review and collaboration tools have enhanced the way the team works together. “I’ve been delighted with how that’s going,” Penny says. Features such as binders for grouping and sharing key documents “were new to us,” Penny explains, “but we’re all using it constantly.”
In addition to being able to process nearly any data at a rate of 900,000 documents per hour, Everlaw allows litigators to get into their documents with unprecedented speed, on an intuitive platform they can feel comfortable using.
They felt like they had to be technologists on the previous platform. Now it’s just so much easier for them to really dive into their data.
For Harness IP, that means “our teams are more efficient and effective. They can get into the data, and they’re not waiting for the upload and waiting for us to do quality assurance.”
Turning the Burden of Data Into an Advantage
With the proper tools, legal teams can quickly streamline ediscovery, investigations, and trial preparation, using customizable visualizations to probe large data sets, intuitive search building to create sophisticated queries, and Storybuilder to compile timelines and data into cohesive and compelling narratives.
At Harness IP, the change has been dramatic. Penny reports, “The attorneys have been excited to make the move to Everlaw. They felt like they had to be technologists on the previous platform. Now it’s just so much easier for them to really dive into their data.”
When technology is supporting you instead of holding you back, it energizes the entire staff. Penny sees it firsthand: “Everlaw has made my life easier. I recently onboarded paralegals, and they adjusted very quickly to the new platform. I think they’re feeling like they’re going to have a very successful interaction with Everlaw and a successful career at Harness IP because they have a product that they can feel confident with.”
To learn how Everlaw users are tackling the challenges of ediscovery today and transforming their organizations in the process, see our library of Everlaw customer success stories here.
