Case Study - Automating Discovery Request Processing for Litigation Efficiency
Veridian Legal Group grappled with overwhelming volumes of discovery requests, leading to slow response times and high manual effort. Contour engineered an automated workflow that ingested, categorized, and assigned requests, significantly improving speed and resource allocation.
- Client
- Veridian Legal Group
- Year
- Service
- Bespoke Solution Engineering & Process Re-engineering
The Challenge: Drowning in Discovery Data
Veridian Legal Group's success led to a growing caseload, but their discovery process couldn't keep pace. Incoming requests arrived through multiple channels, requiring manual logging, categorization, and assignment. Tracking deadlines and ensuring timely responses relied heavily on spreadsheets and calendar reminders, creating significant administrative burden and risk. The firm needed a scalable solution to manage discovery intake and processing efficiently.
Our Approach: Engineering a Streamlined Workflow
Contour initiated the engagement with intensive workshops involving Veridian's paralegals, attorneys, and IT staff. Through detailed process mapping, we identified key pain points:
- Manual Intake: Time wasted logging requests arriving via email, FTP, and client portals.
- Inconsistent Categorization: Difficulty in uniformly classifying request types or relevant case matters.
- Assignment Bottlenecks: Delays in assigning requests to the appropriate team members.
- Lack of Centralized Tracking: Difficulty getting a real-time overview of all pending requests and deadlines.
Our solution involved engineering a new, automated workflow:
- Unified Intake: Developed connectors to automatically ingest requests from primary sources into a central system.
- NLP-Powered Categorization: Implemented a machine learning model to analyze request text and suggest initial categorization and case matter association.
- Rule-Based Assignment Engine: Created configurable rules based on case type, request complexity, and team availability to automatically assign tasks.
- Real-Time Dashboard & Reporting: Built a dashboard providing instant visibility into request status, upcoming deadlines, team workload, and key performance indicators.
The Outcome: Enhanced Capacity and Reduced Risk
The automated discovery processing system transformed Veridian's operations. The 45% reduction in initial processing time allowed the existing team to handle increased volumes without additional headcount. The improved tracking and automated reminders significantly reduced the risk of missed deadlines. By automating the administrative aspects, paralegals and attorneys could dedicate their expertise to the substantive legal work involved in responding to discovery, improving both efficiency and the quality of their work product.