How can solo litigators take on substantial litigation, with thousands of documents, particularly against larger law firms? The answer is, they can’t. Not always, anyhow. The strongest individual lawyers with the most compelling cases are no match for a large litigation team in large civil litigation. Some cases are simply too big for solos and small firms and woe to those who have to learn that lesson the hard way.
That said, there are amazingly powerful litigation tools available that can go quite far in arming solo and small firm litigators so they can take on larger cases and go toe-to-toe in somewhat larger cases that used to be too much to handle.
These technologies will never make any solo lawyers into Skaddenators but they offer a huge boost.
Last week, Shepherd Data announced that it has become a host for kCura’s Relativity litigation management software.
All experienced e-discovery professionals are familiar with Relativity, which some have called “the gold standard” for e-discovery. The trickle-down to smaller firms and solos of this powerful tool is on its way.
Load hundreds of thousands of computer files (PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, etc., etc.) into Relativity, sort them, code them, search them, produce them, and track them with forensic precision. Review “documents” at the office, from home, from anywhere with internet access. No need for any in-house IT. No need for your own servers or storage. Pay a monthly storage fee and loading (set up) fees that pay for themselves many times over in taking your practice to the next level.
Bankers’ boxes, musty folders, and piles of paper are not going to disappear from law offices over night but, in many firms, they already have, and, over time, they will be gone for good.
Full disclosure: Shepherd Data is a Minnesota Litigator sponsor/advertiser but the author of this post is also a Relativity customer, and a very satisfied one at that. There was no payment for this post and it was not solicited by Shepherd Data. It was the author’s suggestion to post the news of Shepherd Data’s new hosting capability for Relativity, not Shepherd Data’s.
If you do look into this powerful litigation tool to help you in your practice, let Shepherd Data know that Minnesota Litigator sent you.
I currently have six cases on Relativity, a total of only about 1.5 gigabytes of data (a mere 50,000-60,000 “pages” of “documents” if you printed it all out probably). I can find every email sent on a specific date from a specific sender for a particular case (in a matter of seconds). I cannot lose a document ever. That’s what I call progress.