Introducing Difference Viewer
Everlaw's Latest Release Aims to Bring Efficiency to Document Review
Attention to detail is one of the traits that separates a good attorney or litigation support professional from a great one.
The ability to catch, understand, and use key details in evidence can mark the difference between winning and losing a case.
Combing through data, scrutinizing the location of a comma, and investigating each detail are the types of things that can uncover crucial information in a case and mark the difference between winning and losing.
However, when you’re dealing with thousands of documents, and more are introduced each day, it can be difficult to stay hyper-focused, and discern which documents look similar to one another, and which deserve a further review. Reviewing these near-duplicate documents can be incredibly tedious, yet is also critical to document review.
With Difference Viewer, Everlaw aims to bring efficiency to the review process and put legal professionals in control. By being able to layer multiple documents on top of one another at once, reviewers can easily spot the differences and similarities in the document sets they’re reviewing, to both save time and fully understand what’s needed.
What Is Difference Viewer?
Manually scanning similar-looking documents is a tedious, expensive, and error-prone process that only gets more complicated as the pile of documents needing review grows.
In fact, according to an analysis performed by Everlaw of near-duplicate documents and document groups, over 28% of near-duplicate documents have 10 or more documents that are nearly duplicate1, and 36% of near-duplicate document groups have 3 or more documents within2. So, comparing only two documents at a time doesn’t solve the problem. The more similar documents there are to review, the higher the cost and risk of missing key information.
And, while many side-by-side and markup document viewers highlight where the differences are between two documents, you may still need to manually scan between them to understand what among the text is different. Markup viewers in particular often try to highlight differences by using confusing text color schemes that can be difficult to decipher. When you’re doing this across 10+ documents that all look alike, it’s exponentially painful.
Difference Viewer seeks to eliminate the need to review these duplicates and near duplicates by displaying the text differences across document groups, and offering the ability to compare more than two documents at once, so you can dedicate time on the legal work that will win your case.
Compare multiple near-duplicate documents in a single view
The primary benefit of Difference Viewer is that document reviewers are able to compare multiple documents in a near-duplicate group in a single view.
The documents are “stacked” on top of one another with marked differences and variants, eliminating the outdated side-by-side scan many reviewers have long contended with, helping them make review determinations as fast as possible.
Quickly see where and what differences are in a streamlined interface
The streamlined interface of Difference Viewer means you don’t need to comb through the near-duplicate documents to find the differences you’re looking for. The shared text between the documents is unmarked and left consistent across the entire group, while the differences are highlighted with boxes marking where the text is not the same.
Additionally, a panel lists out all the text variations for each difference location, so it’s clear exactly where those differences are. This also allows you to click around the documents efficiently so you can jump right to where you need to be, eliminating the need to scroll through dozens of pages.
Code all documents or a subset in seconds
Difference Viewer also goes a step further by allowing you to code right from the Difference Viewer window, so you can continue your review process without missing a beat.
You can easily code all the documents when the content is the same across the set, or if the content is part of a difference you can quickly select only those documents that contain that unique text. This allows you to make quick, actionable decisions based on the content you're seeing without having to manually cross-reference or re-read documents.
Difference Viewer in Action
There are multiple use cases where Difference Viewer can directly help review teams surface insights faster and use document review to their advantage.
Up-level your review efficiency
Review teams consisting of litigation support and paralegals that are reviewing and coding documents need to perform document review quickly to meet deadlines while also ensuring a thorough review process. It’s tiresome, frustrating, and expensive, with hundreds of hours spent searching back and forth, two documents at a time, to spot differences.
With the “stacked” view that clearly highlights what’s different between documents, Difference Viewer helps review teams take their efficiency to a whole new level. The side-panel display of the variants between differences also means you don’t need to do the laborious work of side-by-side, document-by-document scanning.
Surface difficult-to-find insights quickly
For legal teams across different organizations, time is the most valuable resource.
Scanning for differences within documents takes time away from the legal work that matters most. The faster you’re able to spot those crucial differences and similarities, the more time you’re able to dedicate elsewhere.
Difference Viewer empowers reviewers to identify patterns and anomalies within document sets that might otherwise have gone unnoticed due to time constraints, so they can make more informed decisions based on a deeper understanding of the data.
Validate findings in your principal document
For attorneys that are doing a deep dive analysis of document sets, it can be painstaking work to look at each individual document. However, finding that one difference or similarity can help mark a breakthrough in the case.
With Difference Viewer, you can go through each document in the near duplicate group in one view and see how it compares to the findings in your principal document, so you can either validate the results or investigate the differences.
Empower Your Review Team with Everlaw
Difference Viewer is Everlaw’s latest release that leverages our next generation legal technology to help legal professionals do their jobs better.
Although document review can be consuming and time-intensive work, it doesn’t have to be painful. With the right tools at your disposal, your team can discover the differences that will help them get to the heart of their matters, faster.
To see Difference Viewer in action, and to learn how it can help transform your document review process, request a demo today.
1 Source: Based on analysis of over 725M documents in near duplicate groups with less than 500 documents. May 2024.
2 Source: Based on analysis of over 197M near duplicate groups, excluding groups with more than 500 documents. May 2024.
