How Waters Kraus Paul & Siegal Gains a “Decisive Edge” for Their Clients
In litigation, the right facts make all the difference. No one knows this better than the trial lawyers of Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel. Whether seeking recompense for those exposed to asbestos, advocating for the rights of whistleblowers, or protecting wildfire victims, this Dallas, Texas based plaintiff’s firm uses information to give their clients a “decisive edge in the courtroom.”
But finding the information that matters most, and not getting buried in a deluge of irrelevant data, requires sophisticated teams and powerful technology. Extensive resources and cutting-edge technology are required to handle complex cases like those championed by Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel. The number of documents involved in the firm’s litigation matters has increased dramatically over the past decade—involving millions of pages of information.
Mastering Data in Minutes, Rather than Weeks
Making sure attorneys can access key information, quickly and easily, is a task that falls to Roberto Villicana. Villicana provides eDiscovery support for the litigation department at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel. Some of the major challenges he has encountered include running keyword searches to find “hot documents” effectively and the “long, intensive task” of converting documents into searchable PDFs. About two years ago, he began using Everlaw.
“Before we knew that Everlaw had such robust capability, we would use Adobe Acrobat to convert documents to searchable PDFs,” Villicana says. “It involved more than one individual converting them in batches, using different computers to get them to become searchable PDFs.”
The time required for these manual processes was significant. “Sometimes it would take weeks,” Villicana explains, “sometimes even a couple of months, depending on how many documents there were. With Everlaw, we can convert documents in a matter of hours or even minutes, depending on how many we're dealing with.”
From “Pen on Paper” Attorneys to Tech-Savvy Trailblazers
According to Villicana, some attorneys at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel could be hesitant to leverage ediscovery platforms, but Everlaw has proven to be intuitive and easy to use. “With Everlaw, I have seen ‘pen on paper’ attorneys become more engaged in the process of reviewing documents,” he says. “This gives us the advantage of having the individuals who know the case coding the documents. Everlaw gives us a more accurate review.”
Attorneys can now move beyond just documents to broad analysis of their data with tools like Everlaw’s Data Visualizer. “It’s a lot easier to understand the universe of documents and be able to manage a large amount of data into a visual queue rather than the conventional way,” Villicana says. Key insights can then be organized in Storybuilder, allowing case teams to build out their narratives throughout the document review and trial preparation process. “That's one of the key points I love about Storybuilder,” Villicana notes. “Telling a story.”
By combining the expertise of seasoned litigators with innovative tools like Everlaw, the team at Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel has streamlined document review, gained new insights into massive data sets, and freed up time to focus on winning their clients’ cases. That decisive edge comes from a willingness to evolve, innovate, and leverage solutions that let attorneys do their best work—whether they once relied on pen and paper or dove headfirst into new software.
