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Sometimes a major win comes from a combination of not just better technology but also a team’s dedication to finding the right solution.
That’s what happened when a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary company decided it needed a better way to control and manage litigation data while supporting its unique workflows and processes. Initially, the legal department lacked an in-house eDiscovery solution and was relying on outside resources. The team in charge of selecting the new technology did its due diligence before deciding on Casepoint’s platform, which brought cost reductions and new efficiencies, and allowed the department to eliminate multiple legacy systems.
The company’s legal department received a major reward and praise by selecting Casepoint for their new eDiscovery solution. They ultimately won a prestigious company-wide award for managing costs and generating a high return on investment (ROI), and for strong collaboration in integrating Casepoint with other systems. As a result of these successes, the rollout of Casepoint to other company groups has been greenlighted sooner than expected.
Why Bring eDiscovery In-House? And Why Casepoint?
The claims litigation volume in the company’s legal department is significant. But when the department began looking for a new solution, the eDiscovery process was still outsourced to outside counsel and vendors, and its teams had little visibility or agency over many of these applications. Internally, they were dependent on a patchwork of legacy applications that are not designed for legal workflows in general, nor for eDiscovery in particular.
The different applications didn’t share data or “speak” to each other, and basic functions such as user onboarding and setting up permissions to access data had to be replicated with each application and each new discovery project. The complexity of the infrastructure for eDiscovery made it nearly impossible to re-use data and work product from one legal matter in subsequent matters, even though there were multiple opportunities to do so in serial litigation that hinged largely on the same custodians and data. Consequently, the discovery process was often inefficient and even chaotic. It was difficult to monitor progress or workflows, budget accurately, or develop realistic timelines.
The legal department recognized the need for a centralized technology solution that it could manage internally and use to collect, process, review, analyze, and produce legal evidence at scale.
After consulting carefully with Casepoint about current pain points and future requirements, the company identified three primary objectives it sought to achieve with the Casepoint solution: system scalability and ability to reuse data, training and user adoption, and process automation and custom system integration.
The legal department required a solution that reduced costs and increased efficiency by gaining control of their data, workflows, and processes. They wanted to be able to efficiently collect, process, review, analyze, and produce information for use in litigation. In addition to these technical requirements, they also sought a partner to grow with them in their eDiscovery maturity journey while supporting their needs for customized workflows and integrated development requirements.
The client established a rigorous selection process that included 31 different product and client-service evaluation criteria. The criteria were then evaluated through a multi-step procurement process. Casepoint was selected because of the clear strength of our technology, the expertise of our client service team, our client engagement model, and competitive pricing.
Successful, Streamlined Implementation
The overarching goal for this project was to centralize solutions under self-management to allow Casepoint to work with the client’s IT department and its team of developers to consolidate technologies, streamline workflows and ensure the client would be able to manage the technical environment on its own.
The Casepoint platform is designed specifically for speed and scale — with an emphasis on partnerships with the client’s internal teams and client services and development teams. The teams worked together to create a single, central data repository within Casepoint to reuse data and eliminate the problems associated with manual processes, multiple systems, and limited data management, as well as control costs. A “train the trainer” approach was employed so the department could quickly onboard both in-house teams and outside counsel after initial implementation.
Casepoint also built a custom SSO and dynamic-provisioning solution. Additional custom-solution projects included developing and configuring APIs (application programming interfaces) for the client’s team to monitor systems status (via a digital dashboard) in one of their internal systems alongside other systems.
The Rewarding Benefits and Results
The results of this Casepoint success story are impressive and far-reaching.
Training and adoption goals have exceeded expectations, with 230-plus active users per month and more than 270 active workspaces, and newly streamlined legal operations are saving the department time and money.
New matters are added to the platform constantly. From within a single unified interface, massive amounts of data are efficiently collected, processed, and culled for review, and the department averages more than 5 terabytes of active-review data. The central repository solution has allowed the client to eliminate the use of multiple systems to manage eDiscovery data, and it can now reuse data across similar litigation without having to re-collect or reprocess it.
The client is also able to manage all matters with minimal technical support, and can competently train new team members on their own while entrusting Casepoint’s 24/7 surge support to train and support in-house teams and outside counsel when circumstances demand it.
As a result of these successes, the company’s claims litigation group was recognized with a major company-wide award for the successful implementation of custom projects, for a strong demonstration of collaboration and partnership with a vendor (Casepoint), for successful management of costs and budget, and for high return on technology investment benefitting both the legal department and company.
To learn more about Casepoint data solutions please visit www.casepoint.com.
