EPIQ Systems [NASDAQ: EPIQ]: Equipping Law Firms with Intelligent eDiscovery Tools
Tom W. Olofson, Chairman & CEO The advent of Electronic Discovery (eDiscovery) has transformed legal landscape to an extent where the organizations no longer spend years on reviewing large amount of data during litigation processes. Over the years, technology has played a vital role in aiding organizations to ease the herculean task of fishing out relevant documents from the reams of available data, as and when required. Today, the enterprises can sift through mountains of data to look for evidence within a matter of days, if a lawsuit is filed. Assisting modern organizations extract manageable information from heaps of data, a New York-based company, Epiq Systems [NASDAQ:EPIQ] provides customizable technology solutions, leveraging best-in-breed platform. “We provide fully integrated technology products and services for eDiscovery and documents review,” says Tom W. Olofson, Chairman and CEO, Epiq Systems.The company caters its services across different areas such as eDiscovery, bankruptcy, and class action administration. Epiq Systems works hand in hand with businesses to help them achieve their objectives by tailoring solutions, case by case and client by client. The company provides value, expertise, and service excellence, from case management consultation to review and trial preparation, whether the project is small, large, routine, or complex. “We offer the most befitting eDiscovery and document review for cases anywhere in the world,” affirms Olofson. Epiq Systems’ services and technology span the entire spectrum of the eDiscovery lifecycle. The company’s clientele covers a large arc from law firms to corporations, advisory firms, government agencies, and trustees and fiduciaries.
Quicker Review of Documents
Epiq Systems provides a hosted discovery management platform—DocuMatrix—to equip organizations with essential tools to help them achieve a reliable, quicker review of documents. “DocuMatrix’s flexible and scalable nature enables organizations to store and manage unlimited volumes of data and help them handle the most complex cases seamlessly,” explains Olofson.
DocuMatrix’s advanced analytics features such as topic clustering, email threading, near-duplicate analysis, domain analysis, and document categorization enable organizations to identify vital documents and eliminate irrelevant documents rapidly, while providing a more focused and smaller data set in the process. It also reduces the risk of human error through its automated workflow and review accelerators. With its complete foreign language support feature, DocuMatrix has the capacity to review documents in more than 195 languages.
We provide fully integrated technology products and services for eDiscovery and documents review
Actionable Insights through eDiscovery Analytics
In its endeavor to enable organizations make better case strategy decisions, Epiq Systems provides Epiq Analytics—a web-based, user-friendly early case assessment and analytics software. It delivers actionable insights into organizations’ case data through its advanced conceptual search, interactive report generation, data visualization and powerful analytics tools. It also provides control over data minimization for hosting and review, which in turn helps organizations reduce expenses and time to production. Epiq Analytics is built on DocuMatrix to integrate seamlessly into the organizations’ eDiscovery workflow, with additional support for third-party tools.
Epiq Analytics aids organizations make fully informed decisions through early case assessment prior to manual review by identifying critical documents that include discussion threads, custodial documents, and message attachments. The complete case knowledge provided by Epiq Analytics enables organizations to gain an early strategic advantage. It also helps organizations determine negotiation strategies. Epiq Analytics’ visual case analytics allow organizations to identify critical data immediately. Its conversation analysis, search filters, grouping, and clustering features easily identify trends, communication patterns, key concepts and core themes.
Epiq Analytics audits manual review to ensure accurate and consistent results, while rapidly identifying the relevant data set to be promoted to review or tagged as potentially privileged without re-processing. It helps organizations define more focused search terms, natively view documents, and identify over-inclusive terms for elimination or negotiation with opposing counsel immediately through interactive and real-time reports.
Collect, Cull, and Review Bilingual Data Sets
Every organization requires a team of highly credential experts, leading proprietary technology, and best-in-breed third party platforms to successfully complete eDiscovery processes. Epiq Systems proves to be one of such partner that can effectively untangle the challenges faced by organizations. “When the challenges are unprecedented and timelines are compressed, finding a reliable business partner with the right expertise, product, and service can make all the difference,” says Olofson.
To shed light on one of Epiq Systems’ customer success stories, a Canadian company with global operations and in the process of being acquired by a different company, faced a Supplementary Information Request (SIR).
The customer approached Epiq Systems looking for a solution that can help them conduct sufficiently thorough assessment of the potential competitive impact in less than 12 days. From collections to data processing, document review, and production, every step in the process had to be completed within an aggressive timetable set by the acquiring company. However, the most challenging part for the customer was to collect and search a total of 350 gigabytes of data, consisting of approximately 20 custodians, in French and English languages. Apart from a couple of custodians located in London, most of them were in Toronto. Within just a few days after collecting all relevant data, Epiq Systems’ forensics team searched, cullied, and processed the full body of documents. Additionally, the company also cut down the document population for review by approximately 60 percent, from 350 to 150 gigabytes. A team of experts in documents review at Epiq Systems was then tasked to effectively carry out the review aspect of the project. The expert reviewers routed documents to French and English language speaking lawyers. Eventually, the company found more than 60 French-speaking reviewers for this project within just a few days. The end-to-end review process that included quality control was wrapped up in four days.
"DocuMatrix’s flexible and scalable nature enables organizations store and manage unlimited volumes of data and help them handle the most complex cases seamlessly"
Epiq Systems successfully completed the entire process within 12 days, meeting the deadline set by the acquiring company. Additionally, Epiq Systems made the final production to the law enforcement agency, Competition Bureau, a full day ahead of schedule, assisting the client to complete the acquisition process quickly and successfully.
eDiscovery Partner of Choice
Olofson, who has extensive experience in the eDiscovery landscape, says, “Every legal project is different and the legal teams managing litigation, bankruptcy, financial transactions, class actions, and regulatory or internal inquiries face mountains of data.” All those entities choose Epiq Systems as their partner to trounce the challenges across borders and time zones, and contend with increasing complexities in their practice. Epiq Systems capability to develop a range of proprietary solutions, and its expertise with best-of-breed third-party software, help organizations select the solution that is right for the matter at hand, every time. “The breadth of our technology choices and the depth of our management expertise result in streamlined legal operations for our clients,” adds Olofson.
Epiq Systems’ corporate culture contributes to the success that the company enjoys over a long term. “Respect for one another and our commitment to client satisfaction, and high internal standards all characterize this culture,” says Olofson. Built on three core principles—client satisfaction, professional standards, and financial performance—Epiq Systems continues to take positive strides toward the future by strengthening its values and culture.
"DocuMatrix’s flexible and scalable nature enables organizations store and manage unlimited volumes of data and help them handle the most complex cases seamlessly"
Epiq Systems successfully completed the entire process within 12 days, meeting the deadline set by the acquiring company. Additionally, Epiq Systems made the final production to the law enforcement agency, Competition Bureau, a full day ahead of schedule, assisting the client to complete the acquisition process quickly and successfully.
eDiscovery Partner of Choice
Olofson, who has extensive experience in the eDiscovery landscape, says, “Every legal project is different and the legal teams managing litigation, bankruptcy, financial transactions, class actions, and regulatory or internal inquiries face mountains of data.” All those entities choose Epiq Systems as their partner to trounce the challenges across borders and time zones, and contend with increasing complexities in their practice. Epiq Systems capability to develop a range of proprietary solutions, and its expertise with best-of-breed third-party software, help organizations select the solution that is right for the matter at hand, every time. “The breadth of our technology choices and the depth of our management expertise result in streamlined legal operations for our clients,” adds Olofson.
Epiq Systems’ corporate culture contributes to the success that the company enjoys over a long term. “Respect for one another and our commitment to client satisfaction, and high internal standards all characterize this culture,” says Olofson. Built on three core principles—client satisfaction, professional standards, and financial performance—Epiq Systems continues to take positive strides toward the future by strengthening its values and culture.
Company
EPIQ Systems
Headquarters
Kansas City, KS
Management
Tom W. Olofson, Chairman & CEO
Description
Provider of fully integrated technology products and services for electronic discovery and document review
