Litigation Support

Lawsuits are complex beasts. And with the proliferation of new digital technologies, associated regulations and organizations with novel business models, they’re only getting more complicated. That’s why law firms and legal departments seek out assistance from professionals dedicated to providing the unique services modern litigation demands — litigation support professionals.

But what is litigation support exactly? When tasked with executing a lawsuit, attorneys outsource certain responsibilities to litigation support professionals to ensure a timely, cost-effective and — ideally — positive outcome to their matter. These responsibilities typically include time-consuming tasks that don't require a lawyer's expertise and high hourly rate, such as eDiscovery, legal drafting and more. Let’s explore the role of litigation support in a modern lawsuit from top to bottom.

What Goes Into Litigation Support

Litigation support services can span several aspects of a lawsuit. Different litigation support partners will provide different services, but you might expect to receive support for these common tasks:

Subpoena and Citation Services

Some firms specialize in tracking down hard-to-find individuals, like witnesses, and serving them subpoena and citations on behalf of a client firm.

Legal Document Drafting

Drafting affidavits, claims, and similar legal documents might seem like a small part of a lawsuit, but it can also take up valuable time, and making an error in one of these documents can have drastic consequences.

Record Retrieval and Legal Research

Tracking down the right information needed to build an argument and legal strategy can be extremely time consuming, especially when dealing with unfamiliar jurisdictions, different agencies and different types of records.

Advanced Technology

Modern litigation is increasingly complex and digital; in order to carry it out efficiently, litigation attorneys and general counsel must involve advanced technologies in the process, whether that’s for eDiscovery, data management and storage, legal research or any other element of the litigation process.

eDiscovery and Document Review

Often treated as synonymous with litigation support, eDiscovery is a critical service that litigation support partners provide. With so many potentially relevant documents stored in a variety of digital formats, identifying, preserving, collecting, processing, reviewing, analyzing and producing relevant documents for discovery is a highly technical and time-consuming process. Many litigation support partners specialize in this process, utilizing sophisticated AI solutions to expedite the review process.

And More

While modern litigation frequently involves services such as those described above, no two cases are the same. Thus, you may find litigation support partners able to assist in a variety of areas, such as class action settlement management, general consulting, presentation assistance, data analytics and more.While modern litigation frequently involves services such as those described above, no two cases are the same. Thus, you may find litigation support partners able to assist in a variety of areas, such as class action settlement management, general consulting, presentation assistance, data analytics and more.

Why Attorneys Use Litigation Support Professionals

For those new to the litigation space — whether they’re a member of an in-house legal team or a member of a law firm — the reasoning behind why one should outsource litigation support may not be entirely clear. Considering the sensitive and expensive nature of litigation, it might seem more desirable to handle everything internally. The truth is, however, attorneys can realize significant efficiencies by outsourcing to a litigation support partner.

Efficiency

Litigation support partners specialize in executing the tedious tasks in a litigation that don’t require the expertise of a senior attorney. Not only does this mean a law firm’s clients save money by not incurring the expensive hourly rate of an attorney just to conduct, say, a document review, but it also means that litigation attorneys benefit from the faster execution of these tedious tasks.

Lawyers must direct their energy towards the entire spectrum of a litigation — planning and strategy, research, presentation and more — but litigation support partners often only need to focus on one element (such as eDiscovery). This specialization ensures faster and more cost-effective results.

Scalability

Attorneys are hard workers, but they’re limited to the same 24 hours in a day as the rest of us. Typically, litigation — especially complicated, corporate cases — will feature workloads and court-mandated deadlines that simply can’t be rectified without assistance. When your initial assessment reveals that you need to sift through a potentially relevant document set numbering in the millions to carry out eDiscovery, seeking support is a must.

Agility

While not guaranteed with every litigation support partner, litigation attorneys can often benefit from the greater agility that litigation support firms provide. Traditional law firms don’t often incorporate the kind of advanced technology and modern working methodologies that a litigation support firm or alternative legal service provider can offer. Such organizations can often, for example, refine their approach to eDiscovery upon discovering new, potentially relevant information, adapt to sudden timeline developments or adjust as needed to address the unexpected.

Decreased Liability

Because litigation support partners are specialists, outsourcing your litigation support to such an organization reduces the odds that the resulting work will contain any technical or procedural errors. Attorneys tend to be perfectionists, but they are not immune to error, especially not when they’re under the pressure of a tight deadline and a high-stake litigation.

Access to Expertise

Considering the scale of document sets to review, the technical expertise required to process and preserve data, the complexities of modern litigation software and more, litigation attorneys can’t be expected to cultivate both the legal and technical skills needed to successfully execute a matter. It would be entirely unreasonable to expect an attorney to be qualified as both a data scientist and an attorney. Yet law firms typically hire only attorneys or paralegals and not data scientists.

Litigation support firms and alternative legal service providers aren’t bound to that tradition in the same way. Often, a litigation support partner will have a wide variety of experts that they can bring to bear on your matter, including AI experts, data scientists, paralegals and attorneys.

About Reclaim Crest's Litigation Support Professionals

At Reclaim Crest, we offer a suite of litigation support services designed to support your matter no matter where it stands in the litigation process.

Early Data Analytics

Among the most needless costs associated with eDiscovery are the hosting fees eDiscovery platforms charge for documents that ultimately bear no relevance to your matter. We use cognitive analytics and AI technology to cull document sets down only to those that are most likely to relate to your case, ensuring that the document review process moves as quickly as possible.

Managed Document Review

Our team of lawyers and paralegals are experienced in using over 20 eDiscovery platforms, ensuring we can provide the solution that best fits the particulars of your matter. We’ll review your document set for relevancy, privilege and confidentiality — and we’ll apply our rigorous quality assurance process to make sure that it’s done right the first time.

Legal Drafting

After an exhaustive class action suit, it can be frustrating to have time-consuming follow-up in the form of claimant and settlement amount verification. Exigent will take that task off your plate so you can get back to your clients’ strategic needs.

Class Action Settlement Support

Demand letters, discovery affidavits, claims and legal reports need to be expertly crafted in order to protect the success of your case and shape its course. We’ll work with you to ensure that any legal documents you submit are tailored to meet the unique needs of your case.

Legal Research

Rather than waste billable hours digging for relevant cases and verdicts in the jurisdiction your matter falls under, you can outsource legal research to the Exigent team. Using the library of relevant cases we surface, you can focus on building an effective legal strategy for your client.