Subpoena

Receiving a subpoena can at times be a pain; for many companies, managing the third-party subpoenas they receive can be even more of one. Alternative legal service provider Integreon announced Tuesday they are tackling the latter with their new Subpoena Processing and Compliance (SPC) service, an outsourced team of project managers and attorneys that assist in receiving and replying to these demands.

The SPC service functions as both consultancy and outsourced resource, providing input into a client's current process and subpoena backlog before diving into triage and validation of subpoena requests. The focus of SPC team members, the company said, is tracking collection, review, QC, redaction and production of responsive data.

Robert Daniel, senior director of financial services practice group at Integreon, told Legaltech News that he views third-party subpoena processing as “a different animal, from a legal perspective,” necessitating a specific team to handle the problem. In his conversations with clients, he added, it was frequently mentioned as a pain point that would reduce the overall efficiency of the legal department.

“Clients are not often named parties in the litigation at issue but are forced to participate in responding to subpoena requests, often with no return on their investment,” he noted. “Depending on the industry involved, the volume of incoming third-party subpoena requests also can be unpredictable.”

This volume is also growing—the multiple products and services offered by major companies, when combined by an expansion of data types and regulatory record retention requirements, has led to the subpoena process easily becoming unwieldy. Perhaps exacerbating the problem, in Daniel's view, is the informal process legal departments have assigned to tackle the problem, as well as a dearth of tracking and reporting within traditional matter management systems.

“Many companies have attempted to respond by having existing resources perform this task as an add on to their day jobs. They soon realize this model is not very effective,” he explained.

For Integreon, the goal is that corporate legal departments using the SPC service will achieve greater efficiencies and cost savings through outsourcing the process.  The company focuses on Six Sigma for its operational analysis process, which Jamie Berry, managing director and legal services leader at Integreon, noted provides a unique way of looking at the subpoena problem.

“When clients have approached us about this opportunity, it very much sounded like the entire e-discovery process—identify, collect, process, review, produce—but only in miniature form,” Berry said, though he noted applying this process in practice would be “akin to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.” He added, “Instead of leading the engagement with a document review attorney or an e-discovery professional, we chose a legal operations expert, supported by Six Sigma workflow specialists and legal minds. I'm sure this different approach benefited our organization when it came time for clients to choose a business partner.”

The new offering represents another expansion of services for a major alternative legal service provider, whose job responsibilities on the whole have continued to grow in recent years. A report from Thomson Reuters earlier this year found that the percentage of corporate legal departments that use ALSPs for at least one service, including e-discovery, document review, legal research or litigation support, rose to 74 percent in 2018 from 60 percent two years earlier.