Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/25416
structure, that were not very sophisticated in how they handled data. The needs of electronic discovery and the complexity of the review process have really put a lot of pressure on support to upgrade the quality of tools that they have in their arsenal and upgrade their education and training to better understand what the attorneys need in their review workflow. WHAT CHALLENGES HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED THAT A TRADITIONAL TOOL CAN’T HANDLE? Danny: One of our real estate practice groups approached me about needing a working project management database, if you will. They handle hundreds — and on one of their latest matters, thousands — of individual transactions and they needed a database that could handle both document review as well as a number of customized components that were based entirely on their workflow. Older database tools, the traditional database tools, aren’t really designed with that kind of flexibility in mind. What I was able to do using the new generation of tools, represented here by Relativity, was build a custom database on the fly, so they could take their workflow and let the tool adapt to their workflow, instead of the opposite where we’re constrained by the limitations of the tool and we’re forced to adapt the workflow to the tool. OBVIOUSLY, THIS IS A MORE COMPLEX TOOL. HOW HAS THIS IMPACTED YOUR LITIGATION BUDGETS? Danny: By bringing the more sophisticated tools in- house, we’re able to limit our expenditures for outside service providers. These complex tools, until recently, were pretty much only available through third-party vendors and came bundled with a lot of value-added services, which drove up cost. Now, in the law firm model where Thompson & Knight has brought these tools in-house, we’re able to dramatically reduce costs to our clients, primarily because we’re not looking to our processing capacity as a profit center, but much more as a service that enables our attorneys to be more efficient and better serve their clients. YOUR CLIENTS HAVE TO LOVE THAT! Danny: They are loving it, actually. They’ve been very enthusiastic and the attorneys, in turn, have really driven the demand for litigation support services. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE KINDS OF PROBLEMS OR SERVICES THAT ARE BETTER HANDLED IN-HOUSE AS OPPOSED TO THOSE HANDLED THROUGH AN OUTSOURCED SERVICE? Danny: I’d say 80% of our matters tend to be on the smaller side; lower-value matters where the budget for e-discovery collection, processing and production is very limited. In those circumstances, litigation support has been very valuable to our attorneys. They can get data into our hands much earlier in the process. Typically, for example, if a matter comes in to an attorney, his first interest is what’s the life cycle of this case? How can he settle it as quickly as possible? He’s not going to want to incur large upfront costs for e-discovery processing, yet he needs to have the opportunity to investigate this data. We’re able to conduct searches for him at relatively little cost and really progress his understanding of the facts of the case. The corollary to this is that there are types of matters and cases that deal with www.iltanet.org Litigation and Practice Support 35