Return on Investment in Legal Technology

Well, the easy answer is I don't sleep.

Sure. So I am the director of litigation. Support at Korein Tillery, which is a plaintiff's firm that focuses in complex, massive litigation. I'm based out of St. Louis, but we also have a Chicago office and newly added San Diego office.

Been here since twenty thirteen, and somehow I have a ten year anniversary coming up this year, which just shocks me and everybody else that we have it, you know, heard each other over these years working together so closely. But, yeah, I came I actually came out of the finance accounting world before this. So this was my first foray even into kinda eDiscovery and legal, and I've been, you know, self taught mainly along the way.

You most love data as much as we do. I used to build a lot of damage models. Which is where the Excel Nurdiness started and just continues to this day. Fantastic.

No. Consulting world was right? It was just what, however, the clients fell. Legal world, yes, only plaintiff's side.

Well, the biggest one is, while I said I'm director of litigation support, I'm director of myself. I'm a department of one. Right now, we are in the process of trying to expand that team for, you know, many reasons. One being, we just need another person.

The limited kind of resource factor I mean, it hits every aspect of, you know, what I deal with. Whether it's eDiscovery or just assisting with the project management side of the cases, it definitely requires a lot of organization and automation and, you know, thinking three ways to make things more efficient, that if I had a whole team of people, I might not have had a chance to kind of streamlined.

It also helps that I'm just naturally very frugal. And even though I know it's not you know, my own money. I'm still very cautious when it comes to, you know, spending.

And making sure, you know, we're approaching that the right way.

The second one we run into all the time is just cooperation with opposing counsel. And I don't think that's unique necessarily to the plaintiff's world.

I noticed over the years, we get underestimated a lot. Like, I'll get to talk to opposing counsel sometimes and they're like, oh, we can't believe that you have somebody in house that has, you know, an RCA, for example, or You have Relativity in house. That's rare.

Those type of conversations ultimately lead to better cooperation. Have a fan of being able to at least talk to my counterparts if I can, because it makes everything easier when it comes to eDiscovery. That's not always the case. But when that does happen, and we can actually work together on anything technical, especially it's a night and day difference on how things, you know, run.

Right? And and I'm sure the firm loves that, that do you apply that same logic to your decisions about investing with legal tech at the firm, but How is that calculus different? How is that decision making different at a plaintiff's law firm, you think? Well, it's definitely not as standardized as a lot of other, you know, bigger, especially defense side, where they might have a whole, you know, internal procurement team that does this.

This is always going to be a case by case basis. For most of the, you know, technology decisions, unless it's something where I can say, wow. We can apply this to every case in the future, and I'm gonna test it obviously and have a good, you know, scenario of why. And sometimes when it comes to ROI, it's not even the we're gonna bill it to a client type scenario.

It's it's gonna save me x amount of hours. I've done that on even super small purchases, like a sixty dollar PDF plugin.

For sixty dollars, it saved me fifteen hours of time. That's an easy that's an easy sell.

But a lot of times, I do get approached with why don't we have x technology, and if somebody gets a marketing email, and it's usually, I've heard of the product sometimes. It's something I've never even heard of, which I might go Google because now I'm intrigued.

But I find that sometimes people think let's just buy this and it's gonna fix this problem. And the answer is, most of the time, no. That's not gonna fix it. And and is that really what we want?

Like, let's let's think this three more. So it's decisions like that. I mean, after you kind of get the idea of okay. Well, how are we gonna use this?

Then it comes down to yes, cost. But also, reliability, you know, support We've gone with products that may cost more, but I know firsthand their support team is amazing, and that is well worth the premium.

You know, security these days is a huge consideration. And then it has to be somewhat easy to use, if possible, because, again, if it's just me trying to learn it, I have a finite amount of time, and I either need to be able to learn it to teach somebody else or relied back to that support team I just talked about for them to kinda help me get up to speed. So it's a lot of moving parts more so than just how much is this gonna cost? Is this gonna make us money?

I've definitely looked into proof of concepts with some of the, you know, more advanced analytic programs seeing, you know, because, really, I mean, while some of that is it is expensive, if it can save x amount of review hours, that's a real, you know, scenario I can propose and have it worthwhile Unfortunately, sometimes when it those type of situations come up, the data is the problem. It's not the tool, it's not the price, it's the type of data we have just is not very it just doesn't work with that type of program. Think think handwritten notes large spreadsheets.

It's not your typical let's put this in an analytic program and get some great, you know, charts and graphs. So Sometimes that is my biggest constraint too, just the type of data we have.

Absolutely. And, you know, just talked about this on a panel at the University of Florida's eDiscovery. Great timing. Yeah. Two weeks ago with you know, it was myself, another plaintiff's attorney, and then Scott Miller from the defense side. And it was a great mix because we all have the same challenges, and we all had agreed if the, you know, attorneys in charge of cases just let even the tech let support people talk to each other, the amount of time saved an unnecessary disputes or prevent it, because we are talking the same language.

And especially it makes it even easier if we use these same technologies you know, as each other.

I've worked with people where I asked, are you using Relativity? And they say yes. And I said, great. Well, can we get this field.

And they said, sure. Can we get this field? And I said, yeah, it's a system field. Here we go.

And that just fixed three months of emails back before that we didn't really need. So even if it's just at that level, that's a starting point. And Obviously, I'm not an attorney, so I don't get involved with, you know, the case disputes as much. But, yeah, if we can take at least the technical productions disputes out of the mix as much as possible.

It just frees up everyone's time.

It cost me two I had to quantify it because we have a hearing on it. Two hundred hours of my own time to fix production issues, where afterwards, looking back, they could have been fixed it. I mean, it still would've taken some time, but a tenth of the time, and saved all that. And it was all just very frustrating from my part because I knew what was wrong.

I just wasn't allowed to say, can you change this one setting that would fix all of these load file issues you're having. And it's stuff like that, though, that I don't think people necessarily realize how time consuming what seems minor can be?

Also, it's been very beneficial. A lot of times, I see, you know, the opposing counsel like, oh, I know they're counterpart role. So I've got to see them at Eltekon and just say hello, you know. Some of the relationships I've developed just personally have helped be able to reach out when it comes to, you know, the eDiscovery, technical side of things.

I mean, I imagine it's, you know, it's a community. You guys see each other at conferences. You you struggle with a lot of the same issues.

Yes. I mean, there's a whole it's the cleft group, the complex litigation, eDiscovery forum. There's an email group that I'm part of, where, you know, there's a ton of activity always in that. But then separately, I have a lot of people just reach out from Steve on LinkedIn.

And sometimes, I recognize the names, again, from random, you know, conference circuit. But I've met so many people just saying, hey, I didn't realize others have someone, you know, like, in my role at the plaintiff's firm, and we just talk, you know, brainstorm some ideas and, you know, challenges, and that's actually been how I've learned the most. I've learned from others over the years that way, so I like to pay it forward if I can.

I do make plenty of mistakes. And for some of them, I'll actually especially with something minor out. Say, here's what I did, and I'll send it sometimes to our, you know, paralegal team and stuff because it makes people feel like, okay. Look, nobody died because there was this view.

I forgot to send text file. Or it does. Pick pick whatever it was. It's an easy fix.

And Yeah. I've got to overanalyze it myself, but in the scheme of things, we're not making break in the case with this kind of stuff. So there's no need to stress.

Oh, gosh. Common mistakes. I mean well, the one fresh in my mind still, and always will be is Going back to not agreeing to production formats upfront, whether it's in a protocol or even informally, the amount of time spent trying to dig through sometimes what is sent to us, it could be painful. I mean, it's an example I gave recently was, and people laughed because they said you're so new to the industry. You don't even remember when this is common place, but we had like three thousand PDFs sent to us. They were Bates stamped.

In the PDF. But the file name was like scan doc one two three four five. So in order for me to get that in our system in a way people are used to, it took a lot of Well, I didn't have to open three thousand of them thankfully, but it took a lot of, you know, Excel formulas to try to back into it and then QC. It would have been resolved if we could have just asked.

Can you either not Bates stamp them at all, and we'll do it ourselves, or put the base number in the file name? I mean, just something simple. That's one example, but it's the not planning ahead piece is really what it comes down to. Some of that's probably intentional though.

I think it's they just don't have the capability sometimes to do it. And then I'd say this a lot with third parties, and there's not a lot you can do with that one. But if we don't have something in place, there's still I would still gonna get something nice and pretty and organized, so I don't wanna do it twice.

It's interesting. So as other people are entering in this field, which there's a lot of them. And you've got other counterparts and litigations of support who are just starting out Is there a advice that you would give to them given your years of experience doing this to say, look, if I can give you three, sorry, John. I'm gonna do it. Three golden nuggets, right? Sorry.

Exactly. I seem to slip it in every time, Stephanie. If there's like three things that you could tell folks and say, look, if you're gonna be really, really successful, these are the three things that you should be aware of that you should do. They should repeat every time in order to be the best that you could be. I'm gonna take that and change it over. For so in order to kinda get to the point where you can be your best, if you're starting out, you don't know what you don't know yet.

And that's where I'm huge on the networking component. And whether it is meeting people in person, or even if it's just watching or listening to podcasts from people in the industry, you start to build up some, you know, patterns, like, okay, so this is some of the big issues everybody has, or here's some of the challenges people have fixed over the years. And then when you start running into those, you know who to reach out to. So one of my biggest things is I know what I don't know now, I guess, is a weird way to put it.

But if anything comes up that involves, you know, privacy for, you know, GDPR, immediately asking somebody who knows. Because that's a full time job keeping up with that, you know, myself. And I don't have time to do that. Same with, you know, forensics, like, when it comes down to, you know, collection questions, yes, I know, like, a tiny amount, but I'm not the forensic expert.

I'm gonna go reach out to, you know.

Somebody on, you know, a BDO team, for example, that has a whole global team that does this. That's always kind of the biggest piece of advice. Don't pretend that you know just a sound.

Like, you're smarter than you are because it's gonna backfire. I might spend some time researching it before I throw a towel, but knowing when it's out of your wheelhouse is huge. There's just too many moving parts in this industry.

The second way I think to just show value too is automating basic stuff.

When I started, I brought a bunch of my old macros with me.

And I had one that literally just made a list of file names in a folder. I mean, something I did a million times before, didn't really think much of it, but I almost made someone cry because she had just spent ten hours typing file names into a document, and we did it in two minutes. And that's when I realized, oh, I was just starting people didn't really even know who I was, but that kind of you know, value add kind of turned into how I became, like, the resident Excel nerd, you know, just along the way. So I know that's two.

I'm trying to think of a third one here, but I mean, similar to what I just said is I again, I use what's at my disposal as much as possible. So, you know, word, excel, Adobe, I hate to admit it took me so long to learn Adobe actions existed. Like, I finally started using them in, like, twenty eighteen and their life changing. So you've never used those and you use Adobe Lot, that's there's a pro tip.

And because of that, having, you know, these little workflows I created, I then was able to teach others, and then we would do, you know, monthly lunch of learns for a while. And add, you know, in the Relativity training again, you kind of just set yourself out as an internal expert on these topics, and then it leads to external opportunities to speak.

You're right. Is it is it as much in person? No silver lining out of, you know, the pandemic is I joined so many random virtual events, especially with different, like, women in the discovery chapters. So now I got to know a lot of the New York chapter, the Miami chapter, the LA chapter, And I might not have met some of these people, you know, otherwise.

It was hysterical. So it's a first. I have to tell you that The one where you're the metadata to my document production incomplete without you. I mean, you had me at metadata.

I think what you just alluded to is exactly where it's going. It's gonna change pricing models for the way some billing works, I think. Because if you can This is a real real story, so I'm gonna be building a house, and I didn't feel like going to nineteen places on the Internet to figure out the whole process I need. I went to chat keeping T and said, explain to me, like, a ten year old how feeling a new home is gonna work. And it nine out of ten of the points have did or almost spot on to what I eventually then learned, you know, later on. And I think that's what's going to happen in the legal industry. That might be the starting point for a lot of research.

But people have to know it's not you have to check it though still. You can't just say, this is this is right and move on. So there's still gonna be the human aspect. But instead of spending three hours, you know, researching, Maybe your starting point is three minutes of typing your question into something, you know, like check GPT, and then pivoting from there with the rest of the research.

I think that might be one big way. And if that's the case, that's gonna change. You know, if I was a client, and I see ten hours of block legal research billing, and I want to question a bill, I might ask, do you have whatever the you know, less law AI is? And did you use that?

Or are you just, you know, trying to rack up fees? So I think that'll be one of the big conversations that comes out of it. A second one's gonna be training and making sure people know how to use it, not just technically, but epically.

I think that's gonna be a big area. I've played with it quite a bit. I wanted to see how close it got to creating Excel formulas.

And again, like, four out of five, it did well. The fifth one was more complex than it just put your guess. So Again, though, if you're new to something, why not see what you get first and then pivot from there?

We've I've saw it slowly leak into emails forwarded it from, actually, like, the partner level from people again, they're more in the link though, a new tech. No one's asking though, do we need to use this? It's more of you know, check this out, look at how this is being incorporated into, you know, other programs and more general awareness, but Yeah. There's a lot of work that needs to be done there, but it's gonna be interesting because I think this is a game changer, you know. This is already changing how my friend who's a teacher is having students write essays. I mean, it's already incorporated in the classrooms.

They're gonna use it. You might as well embrace it. So What age is that that they're incorporating it? Twelve.

She she said We already know you got you you went out there and did that. So here, your assignment is use chat GPT to, you know, start the essay and then show me what you added after it. Like, Yeah. They were going to do it anyway.

Right? Yeah. It also kinda takes away the, you know, the glamour of I'm using it, you don't know. So Is that?

You know, I still think that's probably the biggest one that's gonna be talked about everywhere.

AI has been in the news for years. I think this is the first time though people are really grasping.

AI and this sense of it. Because when it comes down to all the technology we have, it's still sometimes a battle to get people to use predictive coding models, you know, active learning, pick whatever you want to call it, because there's that unknown factor. Like, we want to see more transparency around it. And that's something I've talked about about too. All of the, you know, platforms out there right now we need more transparency, like, what with these processes, and that's how I can get buy in with people. If I can per say, this is why this document that system thinks this is relevant because of this.

And if if someone can eventually incorporate, you know, the gender of AI with that process, that's kinda like a next level right there too.

I mean, other than that, I think privacy is becoming, you know, back in the spotlight even more so with California.

Just what I think I might understand what they're doing, it changes, and I'm back to having to re research everything.

I think just the same thing I I keep hearing for years, it's people in retention. There's still a lot of people moving around and, you know, hiring is taking a lot longer than I think a lot of people predict it.

Yes. We have not had to do any say Teams collections yet, and I say yet, because the way our cases work, sometimes working on cases that would file at twenty fifteen while teams didn't exist, you know. But for new clients, you know, we're we're actually in the middle of collection right now. And the data sources are very consistently now, you know, text messages, of course, but, you know, WhatsApp, Slack, a lot more, you know, Google Drive type shared sites, you know, Dropbox, your fax.

What I would pick your pick whichever one in a lot less heavily reliant on, you know, network servers, for example. That's a ton of data we'd always collect from a network server. And while we might still be collecting the virtual equivalent of add ins. And that aspect is a little bit smaller, but when you factor in having to maybe collect the whole laptop or the whole phone or that, it's that it kinda evens out.

And a lot of times people are surprised where we might be producing the same amount data as our opposing counsel or more in some of our cases of the past. So it's definitely a lot of different data sources growing, and it's a process. Again, I kind of have been trying to keep up with, but know when to you know, we try to outsource that as much as possible because it's I don't wanna sign the app, David, so I'm not an expert. So there's that aspect too.

Goes your point before, know what you do, know, know what you don't, and don't pretend to be an expert, which I think is the incredibly valuable advice.

Thanks for having me. And hopefully, we'll cross paths. In person, at some point later this year, I sure hope so. Thanks so much, Stephanie. Thanks. Thanks, Stephanie.