COST-SAVING SOLUTIONS FOR CONSTRUCTION LITIGATION

Yates Construction is a family-owned provider of construction and building services headquartered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Incorporated in 1964 by William G. Yates Jr., the company has steadily grown to rank among the top commercial and industrial construction companies in the country in Engineering News-Record. Yates has been involved in the construction of a number of recognizable properties across the U.S., from hospitality venues to residential condominiums to government buildings.

THE CHALLENGE

Construction litigation often presents a towering skyscraper of challenges when it comes to ediscovery. It involves juggling enormous data collections, navigating specialized file formats, and coordinating between multiple legal teams. For the construction companies involved, it’s imperative to collect and review data as efficiently as possible while prudently overseeing the outside law firms working on various matters.

Collaborating with multiple teams using different tools and technology can create inefficiencies in the cost and time spent on a project. The legal team at Yates Construction decided it was time to assert more control over their ediscovery processes both internally and externally. That’s when they turned to Nextpoint.

A Lean Legal Team
The goal of the legal team at Yates is to operate as lean as possible and to be as self-sufficient as possible. April Williams is the sole paralegal overseeing ediscovery projects and keeps a keen eye on costs and expenses associated with litigation. The majority of matters average around 100 gigabytes in size, but there are several larger cases each year exceeding 500 gigabytes – on occasion, they reach into terabytes. With numbers like these, April knew that traditional per-GB pricing models weren’t feasible for her team’s new software solution.

A Frustrated Litigation Wizard
Every day, April operates as an intermediary wizard between Yates’ in-house legal department, outside counsel, third-party vendors, and software support as she navigates between multiple litigation teams and supervises myriad matters for the company. One of the frustrating obstacles facing April was that each outside law firm used their own chosen platform to review and produce documents, meaning that April would have to jump around to each system when she needed to examine data sets or provide clarification on file formats. This was a primary motivator for Yates to seek a more effective workflow and unified solution.

Building Up to the Cloud
Yates had a review tool internally, but it was on-premise software that was outdated and nearing the end of its life. April was the only user of the software, which meant it was a barrier to effective collaboration and required April’s involvement any time a member of the litigation team needed to complete a simple task.

Plus from outside counsel, April was constantly burdened by the industry-imposed per-GB pricing model which effectively punished the company when they had to collect, review, and produce additional data for a matter. When April was introduced to the unique per-user pricing offered by Nextpoint, it certainly caught her attention.

The consistent and predictable pricing model (regardless of data size), combined with the flexibility of hosting and accessing matters in the cloud, were two of the main pillars of Nextpoint that appealed to April’s mission.

Developing a Concrete Case for Nextpoint
Not that any of this was a slam dunk – April wanted to be confident in what she proposed to the company executives. It took a couple of “weekend projects” for April to collect data points on what the company typically spent on data hosting and outside review, but that gave her the information she needed to provide bottom-line numbers to the internal stakeholders.

“A lot of paralegals don’t really care about their company’s bottom line, but I do,” April said. That’s why she put in the effort to conduct thorough research on their current spending and prospective solutions. It’s also why she knew the predictable pricing model that Nextpoint offers was the right fit.

April’s tenacity paid off. Several months after adopting Nextpoint software, she received praise from her boss as well as the company president for saving the firm money and taking the initiative to implement a valuable software solution.

THE SOLUTION

Why Yates Construction Selected Nextpoint for Document Review and Production:

Easy Access and Collaboration from Anywhere
Yates’ previous on-prem platform did not allow for easy collaboration with outside counsel. Sometimes, April would be asked to add someone to their system, but they only had one license, and it had to be accessed from their server.

Now, she can easily add outside counsel to their Nextpoint account and collaborate in real-time via the cloud. She was the only user of their old software; now, attorneys on her team, plus numerous outside counsel and experts, are using Nextpoint to search, review and examine data. Having access to the company’s litigation databases from anywhere at any time has been a game-changer for the legal team who can now multitask on projects.

Predictable and Consistent Pricing
Nextpoint’s per-user pricing model takes the stress off April to constantly monitor how much data they have to store and guess at the costs from month to month. Now they can load up as much data as each case needs without worrying about surprise costs.

“We are able to control costs through Nextpoint because we have the ability to manage much of the data processing and storage ourselves while handling much of the paralegal work in-house,” April said.

User-Friendly and Efficient
April found Nextpoint easy to pick up, and outside counsel quickly became comfortable working in the app as well. April also noted that Nextpoint has more automations that improve efficiency than their previous platform, like OCR and imaging in the processing stage. “It definitely makes a one-woman show a lot easier,” she said.

Her team was worried that outside counsel would be resistant to learning new software, but they quickly became comfortable with Nextpoint after a 30-minute crash course from April. One firm even liked Nextpoint so much that they adopted the software internally.

Superior Customer Support and Online Help
Inevitably, there will always be technical questions and the need for expert support, and that’s where Nextpoint jumps into action. John Thuet, Nextpoint’s Product Training & Support Director, even joined April for a call with opposing counsel where they had to hash out discovery disputes. While he didn’t have to say much, April appreciated Nextpoint’s commitment to supporting her through the ediscovery process.

THE OUTCOME: CONSTRUCTION LITIGATION SUCCESS

Now, April refers to Nextpoint as one of “her babies” – the software platforms she depends on to navigate the complexities of ediscovery in construction litigation. As the only paralegal on her team, April stays busy, and Nextpoint has become an essential tool for her day-to-day responsibilities. “Nextpoint helps me multitask so that I can have several different cases open at one time,” April said. “Being able to do all that in the cloud is great.”