Want To Avoid Mistakes? More Collaboration And More Security.

This product "can materially change everything about [a lawyer's] life."

AJ Shankar

The first thing that strikes you when you wait for Everlaw founder and CEO AJ Shankar to join a conference call is that he has the world’s greatest hold music. Unfortunately, he’s far too timely, arriving less than 15 seconds into the song, forcing me to search the Internet to hear how it turns out for the song’s intrepid narrator.

Can hold music define a company? No, that’s probably overreaching. Yet maybe it’s not worth dismissing out of hand. How often does the average company think about putting people on hold? Not very often, despite its potential to be one of the least pleasant parts of a user’s experience. That demonstrates an attention to detail that can’t be overlooked.

It’s safe to say Everlaw places the user experience at the heart of the product. Shankar, a computer scientist who came to law by happenstance after serving as a tech consultant and watching first-hand as lawyers struggled to work with tech solutions, explains Everlaw’s process based on answering the question, “would we want to use this thing?” as opposed to “is this technically good enough?” As he describes the importance of the user experience, “if people are spending 2000 hours a year or more on these tasks, this can materially change everything about their life.”

Keeping the system on top of user demands is a constant process Shankar explains, “People use it in interesting ways.” Everlaw is constantly tweaking the product to ensure it continues to provide rapid, seamless service no matter what a lawyer throws at it. Some lawyers want terse outlines with only the highlights, some want hundreds of pages and thousands of nested documents — Everlaw can deliver both.

When I got a chance to play around with Everlaw a couple of months ago, what stuck out to me was the StoryBuilder function, allowing the team to drag and drop documents directly into their chronologies, outlines, and memos. Shankar quickly points out that I missed the obvious feature that makes StoryBuilder click: seamless collaboration. What good is that outline if the rest of the team can’t see it, edit it, play with it? As he points out:

If you think about it, this is historically what a lawyer’s workflow looks like — if they want to discuss something they download the document, move it to a medium that everyone’s familiar with, be it Word or a .pdf or whatever, and then pass it around the team.

Those are a lot of useless steps creating a pile of useless copies. Everything about Everlaw works because the whole team can collaborate within the same environment. And, yes, there are options to shut certain members of the team out of certain communications. There’s no need to bother, say, the engagement partner or the client (yes, the client may very well want to watch the process too and Everlaw supports that) with every discovery question. Nor does the expert have to have access to every document in a complex litigation. The point is everyone can be involved and all within the Everlaw environment. And Everlaw offers unlimited users because, Shankar says, “you shouldn’t have to think who you want or can afford to have on the case.”

Keeping everything within the system also maintains knowledge much better than the traditional workflow. If someone were to leave a protracted litigation, where would there work product reside? In emails? In a Slack channel? In Blackberry messenger? By keeping instant team communications within the Everlaw system, that history remains archived with the case in the event someone needs to find it five years down the road.

This collaborative focus brings security advantages too. Consider how many possible hacking vectors exist in the traditional workflow. Multiple copies saved on individual hard drives? Versions sitting in mailboxes both within and without the firm? At this point we don’t need to remind anyone of the perils of using email.

So maybe a final word out there if there’s still anyone squeamish about putting their clients’ data in the Cloud. It’s high time everyone recognize the wisdom of Andrew Carnegie: “put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.” Data isn’t safer because it’s stored in your closet too, it’s safer when someone laser-focused on your data security is watching it 24/7.

If you can marry data security, a workflow that eliminates noted data breach risks, and offer better team collaboration all at the same time, isn’t that worth looking into?

Earlier: Everlaw Manages To Wow Even Within A Strong ILTACON Exhibit Hall