EDISCOVERY DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Like many boutique law firms handling cases with small data sets, Mahendru P.C., a thriving commercial litigation firm in Houston, TX, had previously managed ediscovery projects without dedicated software. For 18 years Ashish Mahendru and his team used Adobe Acrobat Pro to not only compile, code and organize documents, but also execute Bates numbering of productions. When the amount of evidentiary data was small, Adobe sufficed. But, as the data in their cases ballooned, Mahendru’s manual processes became unmanageable. “We were rudderless,” Ashish said. It became clear to him that it was time to enact a digital transformation for ediscovery, so he set out to find the best legal software for small firms like his.

THE CHALLENGE

Mahendru wanted to address three key issues in the selection of a standardized, modern ediscovery software platform for the firm:

1. Exploding data volume in ediscovery
   In 2015 the firm handled a case with over one million pages of documents. A stop-gap solution was to enlist a third-party vendor to process the data through Relativity. But that proved inefficient. As Ashish put it, “We’d ship the vendor all the documents. They’d scan them, import them, and then show us how to search, tag and mark everything up. Then a different vendor scanned the documents and made PDFs. It was like handing off a baton, and it was incredibly expensive.” They needed a simpler solution to handle their growing case data and better serve their clients.
2. Predictable costs in ediscovery
   When using vendors, the firm paid per-gigabyte charges on the data, as well as additional fees for simple productions and other services. Every time they got more data, they heard the vendor’s cash register ‘ding’. It was unpredictable. After two years of dissatisfaction, the escalating data charges pushed them to look for a new solution. Darren Braun, an experienced trial attorney at the firm, said, “We’re paying a ton of money to host data with [our current vendor]. We finally thought, ‘Maybe we could do it ourselves.’ If we could find a more user-friendly ediscovery platform, we could do it all in-house.”
3. Post-production case preparation and presentation
   Ashish and his team sought an ediscovery software that also offered a solution for managing exhibits, deposition transcripts, and case-building workflows. The firm had some document heavy arbitrations coming up that would require a better way to organize and present documents for the fact-finder. “We had no good way to do call-outs,” Ashish said.

THE SOLUTION: FINDING THE BEST LEGAL SOFTWARE FOR SMALL FIRMS

Ashish and Darren researched their options and landed on Nextpoint’s cloud-based ediscovery software-as-a-service. With Nextpoint’s extensive feature set, they now operate independently and don’t rely on third-party vendors. They also said “goodbye” to the exorbitant, roller-coaster data charges. Nextpoint offers them predictable, flat pricing on unlimited data and projects.

The Mahendru team now quickly imports data sets directly into Nextpoint’s Discovery suite with a simple drag-&-drop functionality. They orchestrate document reviews, apply coding, and Bates stamp and produce documents in-house. The team also seamlessly collaborates and shares case notes and files securely within the Nextpoint platform.

Nextpoint’s Litigation suite offers a host of features to help the Mahendru team manage documents and build arguments during case preparation and presentation. They organize, stamp and present exhibits and manage depositions and transcripts within the software. They also utilize Nextpoint’s Theater feature to dramatically improve their in-court presentations.

“One of Nextpoint’s key advantages for smaller law firms is that we provide an end-to-end solution for every case. We take you from the filing of the complaint all the way through settlement or trial,” said Daniel D’Angelo, Head of Product at Nextpoint. “Our simple, predictable pricing structure makes it easy for small firms to manage costs, with no surprises, no matter how many cases or how much data comes in the door.”

THE OUTCOME

The results were immediate. The firm quickly loaded 400 gigabytes of data into their database and started managing all of their ediscovery projects with Nextpoint. Ashish and Darren are now managing productions themselves for a fraction of the cost and saving time and aggravation.

“[The Nextpoint coding panel is] really fantastic,” Darren said. It “saved our lives and enabled us to take on bigger cases without missing a beat and worrying about expensive ediscovery.”

On a recent day in court, Ashish experienced a key benefit of Nextpoint: the software adds tremendous value from end-to-end. He used the Nextpoint Litigation module to prepare his exhibits and Nextpoint Theater view to present his case during a major arbitration. “There’s no clean way to do callouts without a tool like Nextpoint.”

He prepared 167 exhibits and presented 40, pretreating the documents with highlights and underlines. “It was a week-long arbitration, and the other side was using only standard PDF files. The arbitrator could see the opposing counsel’s desktop on the courtroom screen and there was a dramatic disparity in presentation and professionalism between their exhibits and ours.”

Mahendru searched for the best legal software for small firms, and he found success with Nextpoint. Small firm or large, the complexity and volume of data is expanding in all cases. Nextpoint is the smart, simple, affordable answer to modern ediscovery and case preparation.