Bose McKinney & Evans LLP
Tapping into an Intuitive Solution That Can Handle an Evolving Legal Industry
Their Story
Bose McKinney & Evans is a law firm based out of Indiana that serves publicly held and privately held businesses, governmental entities, and high-growth industries. These clients include several Fortune 100 businesses, energy developers and utilities, international manufacturers, municipalities, financial institutions, agriculture businesses, sports entities, start-ups, media, and schools. The law firm works closely with their clients in several practice areas; this includes litigation, corporate governance, labor and employment, intellectual property, and education law, to name a few.
Given the evolving needs of their growing law firm, Bose McKinney & Evans was looking for a self-service solution that would be easy enough for their team to use without long delays, complicated technology, or huge expenses. Additionally, finding a solution that enhanced remote-based collaboration was going to be very important for the firm.
Their Challenge
Brian Jones, Partner at Bose McKinney & Evans, began his legal career in the early days of ediscovery — at a time when the first ediscovery platforms were not built for self-service and a great deal of support. Typically, this required the help of litigation support specialists to ensure that data received from opposing counsel were compatible with their ediscovery platform. In addition, there were many tedious hoops to jump through in order to properly see and review the text, image, and metadata associated with the data.
With an increased need for remote-based work and a greater dependency on ediscovery technology, Jones was looking for an ediscovery solution that would help:
Expedite workflows and lower costs. The process of managing data was both time-consuming and expensive. Often, this process would take days, even weeks, before the law firm would even have the opportunity to complete the case. Additionally, most reviews required a consultation before setting up a review environment (e.g., identifying custodians and search terms and review session training). And even during the review process, there were times when the law firm would need to conduct a complete overhaul because the new custodians or search terms were more important than initially expected.
Improve remote legal work and collaboration. Older on-premise solutions were often clunky and difficult to manage, making it difficult for lawyers to work on cases out of the area. If they found themselves in need of a specific document, they would have to depend on a litigation assistant to find that document and send it via other channels.
And where was the data kept? It was on the company’s servers and was often only accessible on the local network. If you found out that you needed a document while testifying out of town, you had to take a break, hoping that the person in charge of litigation assistance called you and asked that the document be either faxed or printed. If you’re lucky, this might work.
The Everlaw Solution
After working with clunky and outdated solutions in the past, Bose McKinney & Evans knew they needed a modern, self-service solution that would eliminate tedious tasks, help manage costs better, and was, most importantly, easy-to-use. When they first learned about Everlaw, they were intrigued by their cloud-based platform that had countless features and capabilities but was incredibly user-friendly.
Because of the way ediscovery platforms worked, lawyers conducting a case often had the least knowledge about the documents that were assembled, the formats in which clients and opposing parties kept their data, and how the review was conducted, all essential to understanding how to approach and judge a case. It was not ideal.
The law firm became impressed with Everlaw’s sophisticated tech stack, enabling them to work quickly and completely own the ediscovery process without needing extensive support. Specifically, Everlaw’s cloud-based platform would allow the law firm to focus on substantive legal work instead of becoming a tech expert.
The Indianapolis-based law firm found great value in a variety of Everlaw’s features and functions, including:
Seamless uploads. With their team working from various locations, it made it critical for the law firm to be able to access documents from anywhere and at a moment’s notice. This is especially critical when handling large datasets. For example, Bose McKinney & Evans had a case with over 2.5 million documents requiring a solution that could preserve the integrity of the documents’ metadata without long wait times. Everlaw’s fast uploads enabled the team to, as Jones noted, “take documents from clients and opposing parties (native, PDF, or preprocessed) and upload them directly from my computer — no middleman and no wait required.” Streamlining this process has helped the law firm get cases started faster (typically within the day) and eliminate costs (there was no longer a need for litigation support).
Scalable reviews. Reviews can at times be larger than initially anticipated, making it necessary to staff up as quickly and efficiently as possible. When Bose McKinney & Evans needed to add another reviewer to a matter, all it took was an invite by email, and the reviewer could start work immediately. With Everlaw, there’s no additional cost per user, which helped keep costs down for these larger reviews. Additionally, the malleability of the platform allowed the law firm to make changes on the fly when needed. “If, as often happens, we find that certain custodians or terms are more important than originally intended, we can change persistent highlights, codes, and revise settings on the fly. Predictive coding models (there may be multiple) are also updated in real-time based on feedback from reviewers across the database,” said Jones.
Automated productions. In the past, producing documents was often a drawn-out process that required a lot of manual work. With Everlaw’s production tool, the law firm generated productions automatically, making it easy to withhold privileged documents and create privilege logs. Sharing productions with opposing counsel has also been a breeze; the law firm has been able to package productions as ZIP files, making it easier to handle larger datasets. “Producing documents is as easy as uploading them; privilege logs can be created automatically, and there is no additional cost for [running a] production,” Jones said.
Results
It’s blazingly fast, has an attractive and easy-to-understand user interface, and industry-leading security. Basically, if you can figure out how to share a photo on Facebook, you can figure out how to review and produce documents on Everlaw.
Everlaw’s ease of use and scalable technology have made it easier for Bose McKinney & Evans to maintain a high quality of legal work amidst an evolving legal industry. This partnership has given the law firm what they’ve always needed: end-user empowerment. The law firm now has more control over their ediscovery than ever before, translating into greater efficiency, lower costs, and better outcomes for clients.