PREDICTABLE EDISCOVERY PRICING

In 2018, Hugh Berkson was preparing his litigation practice for a rather large incoming case, and he knew he would need a comprehensive ediscovery tool to manage the large volume of data.

Hugh is a Principal attorney at McCarthy Lebit Crystal & Liffman Co., LPA, a mid-sized multipractice law firm in Cleveland, Ohio. Minimizing the cost of ediscovery was a top priority for the firm’s litigation practice, but the team quickly found that the firm’s then-current ediscovery platform’s pricing model was unpredictable and not very cost-effective. Nonetheless, the firm stuck with the product for nearly a year before concluding that they needed a new, more predictably priced ediscovery platform.

THE CHALLENGE

Tasked with spearheading the firm’s review of ediscovery tools and vendors, Hugh faced three critical problems as he tried to zero in on a shortlist of options:

1. Software & Data Costs
   Put simply, the firm’s current ediscovery software costs were difficult to justify. “You bought a subscription in tiers, and you got so many gigabytes per tier,” Hugh said. “I just remember that it was very expensive. We were always worried about using it and running over whatever our data allotment was.”
2. Searching in Ediscovery Document Review
   The structure of the previous platform required that searches be run across multiple databases to ensure complete results. There was a constant fear of forgetting to run the right search in the right database to ensure that the proper result was found.
   “I’d be rooting through the core documents [in a case], running searches and moving things from one database to another, but I’d forget what I had run before. I’d have to run the same search twice,” Hugh recalls. “And if I didn’t run it exactly the same way, the results could be different yet still relevant to the same concept. It created existential anxiety – using the software and trying to avoid this kind of thing.”
3. User Experience & Efficiency
   Hugh noted that many actions in the firm’s previous ediscovery platform took too much time and required too many clicks. The inefficiency was annoying in practice and negatively affected his experience in the software platform.

THE SOLUTION: A COMPREHENSIVE EDISCOVERY TOOL

When Hugh received a document-heavy receivership case, the time was ripe for the firm to revisit its investment in ediscovery software.

“I just started Googling,” Hugh explained. “I looked on a review site for top ediscovery software. I read the reviews and visited websites to get a feel for their product offerings.” Hugh’s colleague, whom he described as having great knowledge of “the bleeding edge of technological tools,” told him directly, “If I had to do it over again, I would have gone with Nextpoint.”

Nextpoint’s unique per-user pricing was a big determining factor for Hugh. “The pricing model was so different from anyone else because Nextpoint wasn’t charging per gigabyte,” he noted. “All of my securities work is contingent fee-based, so keeping costs to a bare minimum is of critical importance. And I loved the Nextpoint pitch: ‘We want all of your work. We want you to load everything you can into our cloud-based system.’”

THE OUTCOME

Cost was Hugh’s number one ediscovery concern, and the transition to Nextpoint delivered dramatic savings. “Our monthly costs [with Nextpoint] are close to a third of what we had been spending previously.”

And as to searching in document review? “I think the thing that caught me by surprise is the speed with which documents will load when everything is online,” Hugh said. In addition, “When working with electronic tools, as I’m making my annotations and notes, I don’t feel as though I have to keep everything in my head, because I know I can run a search and bring everything back. It lets me focus on the record in front of me, without feeling as though I need to try to put each document into the context of the ever-expanding whole.”

“I liken it to a more Zen-like experience, where I can focus exclusively on the thing that’s in front of me again and again. I don’t have to feel like I’m struggling to find the context, because I can go run searches and the context will become apparent at that point.”

Nextpoint’s intuitive interface proved to be an additional benefit for Hugh. “There were certain things that were infuriating about our old tool,” he said. “If you wanted to see related documents, or an email thread, it was three mouse clicks to get to that information. It’s a first world problem, I understand, but it was frustrating.” Nextpoint’s interface solved this and many other coding inefficiencies for Hugh’s team.

As a mid-sized firm (or any size, really) looking for a better way to manage your ediscovery caseload, we invite you to schedule time for us to show you how we can transform your practice and maximize your team’s efficiency.