Civil Litigation Firm Gains Efficiencies, Competitive Advantage using Cloud, Live EDA, and Services

The 122-attorney firm, which has 9 locations in 8 states, was using IPRO eCapture for processing, but chose to migrate their legacy eDiscovery system to a cloud environment with IPRO because of the server capacity and expertise the company provided. As case sizes began to increase, Segal McCambridge took advantage of the power and speed of IPRO's cloud eDiscovery solution, – and Live EDA and services from IPRO—to scale the solution for their specific needs.

Easy to Use Cloud Solution

The firm unveiled the new cloud platform first to its paralegals who picked it up right away with no additional training. The simple UI and approach to the solution enabled the firm to easily extend access to clients or other third parties – including those who aren’t technology savvy – who needed to run searches or access data.

"Our partnership with IPRO bolsters our firm’s commitment to provide our clients forward thinking technology that can accommodate a full range of eDiscovery needs. We are thrilled to be able to leverage IPRO’s suite of services to provide cost effective, efficient litigation solutions."

HENRY LOPEZ, LITIGATION SUPPORT PROJECT MANAGER IN THE FIRM’S CHICAGO OFFICE

But the power of discovery ][ Enterprise also helped Segal McCambridge better manage large amounts of data in-house, enabling them to search and process 500-600 GB of information for one case so quickly that their attorneys were able to file several spoliation motions prior to opposing council processing and reviewing our discovery responses. The speed of our processing directly resulted in the withdrawal of a seven figure demand, said Henry Lopez, a Litigation Support Project Manager in the firm’s Chicago office.

“The cloud has been the right decision for us even before the pandemic, and doing so led to seamless exponential growth during it.” he said. “Because of IPRO’s cloud infrastructure, we’ve been able to expand our firm’s eDiscovery capabilities and provide our clients streamlined, cost-effective, cutting edge legal solutions.”

Finding Use Cases for Live EDA

When IPRO released Live EDA for its cloud eDiscovery solution, Segal McCambridge was eager to find ways to use this new capability to help reduce the amount of ROT (redundant, obsolete and trivial) data that was being transmitted between clients, which was often labor-intensive and costly. After trying Live EDA for one case, they were able to reduce the number of responsive documents from 850,000 to 10,000, allowing the firm to reduce attorney document review time, reduce client’s legal spend and expand our legal defense efficiency.

As many cases last a year or more, data hosting and transmission fee reductions from Live EDA are going to be a game changer for the firm and their clients, Lopez said. “Live EDA is really the way to do this; it’s a proven technology and it works,” he said. “Being proactive really does set us apart from other mid-size firms.”

Hybrid In-House and Outsourced Services

Though Segal McCambridge has expanded their cloud storage capacity to 35 terabytes, the firm occasionally relies on IPRO Services—which also uses the IPRO cloud eDiscovery platform–to process data for its larger cases. The firm relies on the hybrid approach when they must process a large amount of data in a short period of time, along with other external reviewers, Lopez said.

But they also utilize IPRO Services when their internal reviewers are backed up with other cases and the large dataset requires a specialized skill set to ingest and process, he adds. “One of the things that working with managed services allowed us to do was accommodate that kind of workflow because our environment wasn’t originally set up to handle that kind of data simultaneously,” Lopez said. “We rely on services to help alleviate that. They’ve been indispensable for us.”