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As courts develop increasingly digital processes (especially in response to Covid), taking depositions remotely has become common, giving rise to a need for tools that support this new way of working. Solutions supporting remote depositions frequently offer voice-to-text transcription, sophisticated exhibit management capabilities and collaboration opportunities in addition to a video platform. Leading vendors include Prevail Legal, DepoDirect, and Steno.

Remote Depositions

<p>As a result of the entrenched nature of eDiscovery, litigation is an area of law in which a large number of technology vendors operate. The field of eDiscovery continues to evolve, with ever more sophisticated tools providing forensics solutions and data analytics capabilities. The acquisition by Reveal of Brainspace and NexLP is a good example of an evolving vendor, though Relativity, Exterro, Integreon, AccessData, Everlaw and many others have also developed data products. End-to-end case management systems have now adapted to provide capabilities that support other aspects of litigation practice, including chronology development, transcript management, exhibit management and trial preparation. Major players such as Opus 2 and Litera Litigate allow for integrations with eDiscovery vendors and the import of tagged hot documents into the case management system. During the pandemic, virtual court work has become necessary, giving rise to the development of platforms such as Armatus and DepoDirect for remote depositions and trials. In addition to these categories, many other point solutions have developed to support various aspects of litigation practice.</p>

Litigation Management

When eDiscovery became ubiquitous and law firms were regularly confronted with large numbers of files that required review using a combination of technology and an army of people, the industry of eDiscovery services started evolving. Instead of a law firm hiring contract attorneys as reviewers, they started engaging third party service providers to do the work. The early ALSPs focused on this type of work and the volume has only increased with increased number of files in discovery. Providers in the category include Epiq, Integreon.

eDiscovery Services

Alternative Dispute Resolution

In preparation for trial in certain jurisdictions, parties must file a book of authorities, a binder that records all cases cited in support of argument along with brief summaries of those cases. In other jurisdictions, a table of authorities is required at the beginning of a brief, referencing all caselaw, statutes and other secondary sources relied upon along with the page number on which those sources appear in the brief. This category of solutions automates the creation of a book or table of authorities based on uploading of key documents. 

Book of Authorities

Brief analysis tools provide a starting point for legal research, or a final check of court documents prior to filing. These solutions allow users to upload a brief or any document containing citations, and provides an analysis of the caselaw cited, including a report of cases that are relevant to the issues in the brief. The leading solution in the United States is Casetext Legal Research. In France, Doctrine is the category leader. Both Westlaw and LexisNexis have developed competitor products.

Brief Analysis

<p>Similar to a knowledge bank or a clause bank, a brief bank is an easily searchable repository of litigation documents that can be used as models and samples (also known as precedent material). Document management systems can sometimes become messy with multiple drafts of pre-filed documents, and in circumstances where rigour and consistency is not applied to tagging final, filed documents, it can be difficult to find the relevant precedent documents unless effort has been taken to collect and store them separately. Fastcase, for example, now provides an API into a firm's dockets, through Docket Alarm, that is able to operate as a secondary repository, distinct from a document management system, containing only final filed documents that may be designated as precedent documents.</p>

Brief Bank

As the artifical intelligence technology used in the legal industry has matured, solutions have evolved that help lawyers draft briefs and motions by suggesting arguments and authority based on the algorithm's conceptual understanding of the facts of a case. As a lawyer begins to draft, these tools suggest relevant authority so that time spent searching for caselaw and relevant statute provisions is minimized. Casetext's Compose is the best known of these solutions.

Brief Drafting

Case Collaboration

Creating a chronology of events is often one of the first tasks in a litigation matter to understand the series of events that led to a claim being made. Chronologies become extremely long, and a critical aspect of the storytelling of a case. Being able to tie key documents, issues, and witnesses to items in the chronology is a critical aspect of litigation strategy. Electronic chronology solutions commonly allow for issues and witness tagging so that the chronology becomes an organic document linked to key evidence. End-to-end case management solutions typically include automated chronology development. This category includes only those that provide chronology support outside of more fulsome case management support. 

Chronology

Ensuring that case citations in briefs, motions and pleadings are accurate and correctly formatted requires painstaking manual proofreading. Various solutions address this pain-point. Some, like Litera’s Litigation Companion and Thomson Reuters’ Drafting Assistant, are Word plug-ins that allow simple in-app checks of citations and citation formatting. Others, such as Casetext’s CARA, Quick Check in Westlaw Edge, and the Judicial Brief Analysis by LexisNexis allow for the uploading of a brief or any document that contains citations, whereupon the tool provides lists of additional relevant cases, note-ups of existing cases, or cases that should be cited in opposition. This functionality is not limited to the US, with Doctrine providing a robust citation check solution for French law.

Citation Check

Law firms handling many litigation cases on behalf of clients must track hundreds of court dates and deadlines for these cases. Court calendaring solutions automatically import key court dates and schedules and distribute these to litigation teams, as well as being able to trigger reminders or "ticklers" to let lawyers know that deadlines are approaching. CourtAlert is a leading provider. See also, Docketing.

Court Calendaring

Solutions supporting the filing of documents in court provide online platforms that enable and streamlined electronic court filing. Due to jurisdictional differences, these solutions are often state- or region-specific. An example is One Legal, which is limited to California. Others, such as InfoTrack, are licensed to support e-filing in numerous states. Court e-filing solutions often provide integrations to practice management systems, to further streamline the process.

Court Filings

Court forms vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and must be populated with specific information relating to a litigation matter, including the case file number and party names. Solutions such as Forms Workflow have developed in states that automatically pre-populate court templates for each jurisdiction and which retain case-specific information so that each subsequent pleading or filing within the case is auto-filled. In Canada, ACL by Korbitec captures matter-specific details and autofills court forms and letters.

Court Forms

Docketing tools typically provide litigation docket event (calendaring) management and access to documents that have been filed in litigation matters. PACER, which stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records and is run by the US Federal Judiciary, is the main repository for Federal dockets in the United States. Due to costs associated with using PACER, and the way it limits distribution of filed documents to particular members of a case team, competitors such as PacerPro and Docket Alarm have gained traction. These docketing solutions provide automatic docket updates and delivery of newly filed documents to entire case teams within minutes of filing. PacerPro can also automatically insert filed documents from dockets into an organization's document management system (DMS). New capabilities are being developed within these tools including analytics and APIs that allow firms to gain easy access to their entire docket history.

Docketing

Early case assessment involves using data to estimate the overall risk involved in prosecuting or defending a litigation case, regulatory compliance inquiry or internal investigation. Most civil cases settle before reaching trial, and it can be difficult for legal departments to assess whether a case that has been brought against them is likely to be one that settles or proceeds, how long it may take to settle and what the settlement amount might be. By using various types of data, organizations are better able to assess whether it's worth taking a case to trial or trying to settle it, and how to negotiate the right settlement amount. Performing early case assessment allows legal departments to better forecast the risks of a case, plan for and manage litigation costs, reduce the volume of information they need to review for a matter, and manage the time and resources they should spend on a case that may settle before proceeding to trial. Specialized solutions have been developed to aid the early case assessment process and provide legal departments and law firms with the insights they need to more efficiently determine the risks and likely outcome of a case. Zapproved is a leading provider of early case assessment solutions for legal departments. Many eDiscovery vendors such as LogiKull, Everlaw, and Exterro offer the ability for lawyers to more easily assess their client's data set and perform early case assessment.

Early Case Assessment

Case management solutions offer collaborative online repositories to manage the various aspects of a litigation case and prepare for trial. Advanced case management platforms allow for end-to-end litigation management, from chronology automation, building the cast of characters, deposition management, and ingestion of hot documents from eDiscovery solutions, to trial preparation, transcript, and exhibit management. Collaboration across trial teams and with clients is usually supported. Leading solutions include Opus 2, Everchron and Litera Litigate (formerly Allegory).

End-to-End Case Management