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A condensed version of this article is running in Corporate Counsel and The American Lawyer's December issues under the title “A Broader Application.” The full version is below.

 

Based on the number of e-discovery products and platforms available today, an innocent observer could easily conclude the market has become relatively commoditized. After all, the cloud has leveled the playing field allowing almost anyone to upload, review, and produce data without any noticeable friction. It therefore requires a special kind of company and leadership to create a unique offering that is distinctive and innovative – one such company is Casepoint.

Founded in 2008, Casepoint has steadily grown its user base to include law firms, multi-national corporations, government agencies, and more. They've steadily improved and refined their software and infrastructure to provide superior support and usability geared for all sizes of litigation matters.

And while e-discovery certainly continues to be a core competency for Casepoint, the company started envisioning how their technology could be used for the broader needs of a litigation effort since the machinations of e-discovery are only one small piece of a matter (although it typically accounts for the largest expenditures). There are a multitude of other factors and contingencies and angles that must be tracked in litigation, and Casepoint is in a perfect position to shift from simply being an e-discovery platform to a much broader, inclusive “litigation technology” platform.

At the heart of every document review platform is a database populated with fields of information plucked from documents and files. But that same foundational database technology can also hold and track information about individuals involved in the litigation matter (clients, doctors, experts, etc.), or the media containing ESI coming into the firm that must be tracked by litigation support personnel. Casepoint is allowing their database tools to be used in a variety of scenarios to better enable litigation teams to track the information that's important and relevant to the overall matter.

As part of this effort, Casepoint has re-engineered and re-structured some of their backend technology to ensure the platform's response time is as close to instantaneous as possible. When you're deep in the throes of a colossal document review, every second counts. On the front end, Casepoint can be accessed through a web browser as has always been the case, but the company also offers a desktop application using the same web connectors, allowing users to work in their most efficient manner. Two-factor authentication is also now turned on by default.

Cloud Uploads and Cloud Collections

Historically, Casepoint customers had to send their data to be processed into the system, but today customers can upload their own data through the web interface (although Casepoint Service Teams are still available to do the work if you prefer).

And while that process is not unique to Casepoint, the ability to create data processing “templates” is an excellent way for firms to determine exactly how native files get converted into TIFFs, or whether hidden columns in Excel are processed. Once a template is created and customized in the system (presumably by a litigation support professional), then other individuals at the firm can easily use those templates without the risk of causing havoc.

Casepoint also offers a “Cloud Collection” feature allowing the platform to pull data directly from Gmail, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive. Casepoint simply sends an email to a custodian with a link so they can authorize the temporary (and secure) connection from Casepoint. No one has to send their password or download files manually.

Folders of Documents

There are various methods for navigating through your documents in Casepoint, but most teams will use Folders to hold important documents, or sort out custodian documents, etc. You can create Folders to help organize documents and files in any form that is most helpful to the way you work. Folders can be private or public, and Casepoint encourages users to add a short description as to why they are creating a Folder so that can be referenced later. Casepoint doesn't limit the number of Folders you can create, so understandably some teams will go crazy. Fortunately, Casepoint provides a Folder search box so you can find a specific folder.

The document list in Casepoint can be customized with the columns of metadata that are most helpful for your review. Columns can be filtered and sorted easily, and when you find a specific layout that works for you, you can save it. In addition to the document list, Casepoint offers a grid layout for your documents that shows small thumbnails of the first page of each file. Clicking a magnifying glass on a thumbnail brings up a preview of the document.

To View a Document

When you select a file, Casepoint adjusts into the Document View mode shifting the document list to the left, your document in the middle, and opens the coding panel on the right.

Casepoint's native file view is powerful and flexible, and has been capably designed to handle CAD drawings and 3D diagrams. This is extremely helpful for construction litigation matters, and the 3D models are interactive allowing you to view objects from multiple angles.

The TIFF viewer in Casepoint offers some innovative features around redactions, including “inverse” redactions and a tool to auto-recognize faces in a photo and redact them. Another novel feature should not be necessary, but based on customer requests, Casepoint allows redacted documents to be printed with a transparency on the redaction so that lawyers can read the document without completely blocking out the text. This is actually helpful from a quality control standpoint to ensure that the redaction is accurate before it gets finalized.

At the bottom of the document viewer is a noteworthy button called “Similar Text” – you can highlight a paragraph in the document and click this button to bring up other documents containing the similar wording. Many e-discovery platforms can show “near-duplicate” documents but the comparison is based on the full document. The “Similar Text” button is extremely useful for folks that simply want to find a similar collection of sentences in other documents rather than comparing full documents.

Coding and Visual Analytics

For coding documents, Casepoint lets litigation teams create multiple templates that can be toggled from a drop-down on the right panel. Tags can also be used to further categorize files (Folders are used more to organize files).

Casepoint has done a lot of work around their visual analytics tools to make them convenient and interactive. For example, the list of email domains can be viewed as brightly-colored circles—the bigger the circle, the larger number of messages involving that domain. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in to explore the different groupings. You can do the same for looking at file extensions, as well as communication networks based on emails sent amongst individuals.

Drilling Down into Search

When it comes to searching, Casepoint again brings some unique features to the table that aren't regularly found in other platforms. For example, Casepoint allows you to create multiple search indexes in a matter. Most folks only search a master index which runs a search across the entirety of files in a database. But with Casepoint, you could create a separate index that only runs a search on files received from the opposing party. There are ways to conduct a search like this with filters, but a separate index provides some unique advantages in certain scenarios.

In addition, Casepoint allows you to easily customize the list of “noise words” or “stop words” in an index. Most platforms exclude many common words like “to” or “and” from their index to keep things efficient, but Casepoint allows you to include them when necessary.

The Advanced Search tool in Casepoint provides a visual interface where you can add different connectors and visibly see how your search parameters are being built. The “Test Query” button at the bottom lets you see the results a search will return before you fully commit to running it. Lastly, Casepoint includes what they call a “Drill Down” mode which is a basically a search applied to a subset of search results.

Sampling Done Right

Two additional features in Casepoint definitely merit a mention for sampling and email threading.

When most litigation teams perform a “spot check” on documents to ensure they're coded correctly, they just blindly scroll through a list and randomly open files. But this is not a legitimate and formal random approach. Clicking the Sampling tool inside Casepoint provides teams with a true random selection of documents so they can have more confidence in their quality checks.

Casepoint has spent some time ensuring their email threading tools easily shows original emails along with their replies and forwards indented appropriately. You can also see which emails are inclusive of the ones above it.

In a market on the verge of ordinary, Casepoint is pushing the boundaries defining what an e-discovery platform can offer. As litigators continue to better integrate technology into more aspects of their practice, Casepoint is well positioned to meet their needs and provide them a comprehensive set of tools for the modern-day litigation demands.

 

Brett Burney helps law firms and corporations successfully navigate e-discovery and information governance and can be contacted at [email protected].