Richards Butler

Company Background

Richards Butler, now a part of Reed Smith LLP, is an international law firm with more than 400 staff in London and 300 throughout Asia, the Middle East and South America. The firm's contributions to the legal industry are widely recognized, particularly its dispute resolution practice, which accounts for over 50 percent of the firm's total income.

Ranked as one of the top ten litigation firms in the UK, the dispute resolution practice is by all measures one of the largest and most respected in Europe and Hong Kong.

The Need

Throughout the past ten years, the firm's Commercial Disputes Group (CDG) has worked on numerous large, high profile international cases in conjunction with other law firms in the US and beyond. As is common practice, litigation support services were used to manage the cases across multiple firms, and generally those services were specified by the client or another law firm sharing the case. While the firm played a key role in the disputes, lawyers at the firm found that they had to learn multiple litigation support and eDiscovery systems provided by different firms or clients.

"Electronic discovery was pioneered in the US, but it is now a major focus in England and elsewhere," said Lee Hanley, IT Director at Richards Butler. "We recognized the need to run the process with our own state-of-the-art litigation support system and to increase our expertise in electronic discovery."

In 2004, Richards Butler began a search for a single, best-of-breed in-house electronic discovery and litigation support system that would set the firm apart in international litigation. To select the right solution for the firm, Hanley and the partners at Richards Butler identified several key criteria the system would need to meet. It would need to be:

• Scalable to manage very large cases and manage clients from abroad
• Easy and quick to deploy to handle large cases waiting in the wings
• Performance-driven to allow easy access to clients in different locations, simplified classification of documents, custom report creation and data distribution
• Proven to be successful with satisfied, long-standing customers, including large firms with demanding requirements
• Accessible through Citrix and equipped with standard technology
• Adaptable to synchronization with local scanning and coding bureaus

The Solution

After thorough investigation of several solutions, and interviews with firms using the solutions, Richards Butler chose Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect - the only solution that met all of the firm's key criteria. Hanley was particularly impressed with its scalability, ease of use and rapid deployment.

Installed widely throughout the US and with a majority of the Magic Circle and other top litigation firms in London, Introspect was handling many large cases with millions of documents. It was also one of the few solutions reviewed that could be hosted, used standard technology such as Crystal reports, and was easily integrated with Citrix.

Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect is the industry-leading discovery review and production solution for complex litigation and compliance projects. It offers rapid culling and filtering of large data sets, automatic workflow processing and collaboration, image and native file review combined with transcripts and documents from opposing counsel, multilayer foldering and full production management and reporting capabilities. It is currently used by six of the top ten global law firms.

The Benefits

• Deployed Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect within four weeks
• Managing eDiscovery and litigation support for three international cases with multiple firms
• Currently running 500,000 pages of documents on Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect
• Anticipating 100 percent increase in pages with addition of major $140 million global case on system
• Increased internal eDiscovery expertise with 40 staff trained on system
• Eliminated need to retrain staff on various systems for different cases

Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect was deployed throughout Richards Butler's global offices within four weeks of purchase. The first case was live on Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect within a month. Currently there are three cases on the system, which include one-half million pages of review and 20 lawyers across 6 firms. A further case, involving a claim of $140 million, will be added to the system imminently.

"Introspect's ability to scale gives us confidence that we can add the new case without glitches in any of the cases running on the system," said Hanley. "The exciting development is that we are now managing the litigation support and eDiscovery for all of these major cases."

The firm has trained 40 lawyers and internal staff on the Autonomy ZANTAZ Introspect system and plans on training many more, greatly increasing its expertise in eDiscovery. The in-house solution increases the efficiency in the litigation support process, providing strong return-on-investment on the software and ultimately benefiting the paying client. For example, staff working on more than one of the cases do not need to retrain on other systems. They are able to start reviews immediately and move between cases quickly. This enables them to deploy staff strategically and speed up the initiation process, providing real value to clients.