Kegler Brown Lowers Ediscovery Costs and Improves Client Relationships
Their Story
Kegler Brown is a law firm with more than thirty attorneys based in Columbus, Ohio. The firm’s litigation practice areas range from personal injury law to global dispute litigation. Kegler’s litigation support department helps manage complex litigation, deal with the large volumes of data in their cases, and provide training on software solutions used by the firm.
The Challenge
The firm had relied on a number of different ediscovery service providers but started looking for a better solution because they repeatedly struggled to anticipate costs for their clients. The monthly bills often included too many surprises to make accurate cost predictions. Tasks as simple as Bates numbering or converting documents into PDFs would be listed out as separate line items with their own charges. The best (and obviously unsatisfactory) answer that Kegler could give to their clients when asked about cost was, “it depends…”
Everlaw has been a positive change not just for our firm but for our clients. The transparent pricing model makes it far easier to anticipate costs and share that information with our clients.
– LouAnne Conrad, Paralegal, Kegler Brown
Kegler vowed to solve this transparency problem by bringing the software in-house, but the initial solutions that they evaluated proved too difficult to use. Being responsible for not only knowing how to use the platform themselves but also training the entire team of attorneys, the litigation support team prioritized finding a software solution that would be easy to use.
The Everlaw Solution
The team found Everlaw so easy to use that getting started on a new case required little training. In particular, the user-facing uploader and fast ingestion processing allowed them to upload data directly into Everlaw, reducing delays and eliminating lag time between initial document upload and review. They learned that the visual search interface makes it easy to build complex, repeatable searches, even for beginners. The ability to quickly build and run highly sophisticated queries by simply clicking on terms also made it faster and easier to train attorneys.
Everlaw really listens to us and is constantly committed to building and improving the platform. Many of our suggested features and functionalities are now part of the platform.
– LouAnne Conrad
Kegler attorneys were impressed with the flexibility of the customizable review interface in Everlaw, which allows total control over layouts down to an individual reviewer-level, resulting in maximized efficiency and faster document review. And when an attorney needs to give outside access to a document, unified sharing and messaging helps them to grant access to specific files while maintaining the security of their data set.
Results
Ease of use and the subsequent attorney adoption played a significant role in Kegler’s decision to implement Everlaw but the transparent pricing model has been yet another reason that the firm stands by its decision. Pricing on Everlaw is based on the amount of data hosted and includes unlimited user licenses, unlimited processing and productions, and unlimited access to a dedicated customer success team for training and support at no additional charge. This enables Kegler to fully leverage advanced functionality without incurring any surprise fees. Kegler clients also appreciate having far more clarity into the cost of discovery.
Attorneys don’t have hours upon hours to spare for software training. They want to sit down with someone for a half hour and know how to use a new system.
– LouAnne Conrad
Everlaw ultimately sped up and streamlined the review process. Reviewers no longer wait for searches to populate or for documents to load in the viewer. Previously manual tasks, such as coding or redacting documents, are now done automatically in Everlaw via Batch Coding and Pattern Redaction, allowing users to tag dozens of documents and redact all instances of a keyword, phrase, or pattern at once, instead of document by document.