CASE STUDY: ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY

COMPANY: McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP

HEADQUARTERS: Honolulu

EMPLOYEES: 83

I.T. STAFF: 3

BUSINESS: McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP (M4) is one of Hawaii’s preeminent law firms, serving the legal needs of the islands and the Pacific Rim for more than 20 years. M4 has handled some of the largest business and real estate transactions in the state, and its litigation department routinely is involved in some of Hawaii’s largest cases, whether they include local, national or international clientele. M4 prides itself on handling matters of all sizes with the same small-firm focus and attention.

At a Glance

E-DISCOVERY IS EVERYTHING

E-discovery solutions enable firms to better organize and analyze critical information, review costs and know sooner which leads to follow.

Chief Administrator Stephen Holmes says M4 litigators save time in document review thanks to Symantec’s Clearwell eDiscovery Platform.

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2 CASE STUDY: ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY

The Symantec Clearwell eDiscovery Platform is sparking

greater efficiencies at the McCorriston Miller Mukai

MacKinnon (M4) law firm in Honolulu, and ensuring that

processes conform better to the ways in which legal

business increasingly is conducted today, says Stephen

Holmes, the firm’s chief administrator.

Among M4’s 35 attorneys, about 10 litigators and

paralegals have used Symantec’s Clearwell 8100

e-discovery document management system since May.

And Holmes reports that they have been pleasantly

surprised to discover that Clearwell is user-friendly, and

proving a significant boost to formerly intense document

review tasks.

“They can do searches on 10,000 documents and —

boom! They have an answer immediately,” Holmes says,

adding that the filtering speed and accuracy of the

Clearwell platform are “like night and day” compared with

the firm’s former e-discovery system.

Before the switch, M4 attorneys didn’t always see eye

to eye with IT staff when it came to the need to move away

from paper-based discovery work, Holmes says: “They

grew up doing it the old way. It was very difficult to wean

them from their traditional methods.”

The new solution “gave us an opportunity to say, ‘You

need to start doing it the right way,’ ” he says.

Holmes ought to know: He spent seven years as an

attorney before deciding to pursue his love of technology

and was tapped as the chief administrator at M4. When

the time came to choose a new e-discovery platform for

M4’s litigation team, he had a good sense of what the firm

needed — legally and technically — out of any new solution.

Finding the Right FitBefore implementing Clearwell, M4 used other software

products to input and review data. The problem, Holmes

says, was that “our users would end up having to review

massive amounts of documents that would not even be

close to their discovery request. The Clearwell product is

much better at getting all that stuff out of the way very

early on in the process.”

After handling a few cases that posed significant

challenges to the former system’s document review

capabilities, Holmes began searching for a more robust

replacement. “We started looking around for something

that would be able to move us forward.”

He spent time reading white papers, attorneys’ blogs and

e-discovery websites, educating himself about the latest

industry developments. To a great extent, Holmes says,

cost drove his ultimate selection of Clearwell. But he also

felt the platform’s capabilities proved a better match for

M4’s needs, with enough horsepower to perform critical

tasks without the added expense of superfluous features.

“There are some really expensive products made for

firms that will end up processing a lot more data than we

do,” Holmes says.

In the fast-moving field of legal technology, Holmes

says he also appreciates the fact that Clearwell has an

established reputation. When Symantec acquired Clearwell

in 2011, Holmes felt even more confident:

“[That] gave me even more assurance that this

was something that was going to stick around.”

Holmes also was able to discuss the firm’s needs

with a Symantec representative to ensure the

Clearwell 8100 really was the best fit.

Shail Shah, a Chicago-based CDW account

manager and legal solutions specialist, notes

that Clearwell often ends up being a sensible

solution for law firms because it complements

Symantec’s Enterprise Vault document

archiving system, which many firms already use.

“Added to that, Clearwell gives you a full

electronic e-discovery system,” Shah says.

Making the TransitionFirms can obtain the Clearwell platform in

the form of software, but M4 purchased a

rack-mounted appliance for its server room.

Minimal setup was required to join the platform

“You open a new case, point Clearwell to whatever

information you got from the client, and say, ‘Go.’ ”

–Stephen Holmes, Chief Administrator, M4

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Best Practices: How to Choose an E-Discovery SystemWhen Shail Shah, a CDW account manager and legal

solutions specialist, helps law firms to choose e-discovery

platforms and document management systems, his first

step is to identify their critical needs. Many of CDW’s

solutions are custom designed to work with the Electronic

Discovery Reference Model, an industry guideline that

guides functionality for each processing phase. “We go step

by step,” Shah says. “Exactly where in this reference model

are you having your biggest pain points?”

Determine Data NeedsThe next question: How much data will be handled? Typical

case size helps to guide the decision. Some firms fall

comfortably in the gigabyte range, while firms that tend

to handle very complex matters may find they work in

terabytes of data.

Understand the Options CDW offers a range of solutions for system implementation.

Firms may purchase an e-discovery appliance to be installed in

a server room, or a software package may be used. They may

choose perpetual licensing or concurrent licensing with annual

subscription fees. Firms also must decide whether to engage a

third-party service provider or manage the system themselves.

Budget for the Long Term Firms may use a platform for five to seven years, so the long-

term outlook matters. That means the lowest cost option may

not be the best, Shah cautions: “This is something you don’t

want to go cheap on because it really affects your bottom line.”

The upfront investment will pay for itself as the firm gains

efficiencies and cost savings, Shah says.

Involve the Right People in Selection “Always involve someone from the litigation team,” Shah says.

He also recommends getting input from IT staff, who likely will

manage the system and the supporting infrastructure, as well

as managing partners and other key decision-makers.

to the firm’s domain, grant user permissions and assign

administrative rights, but no additional equipment was needed.

The platform is web-based, so attorneys log in through

a desktop browser or access it while working from home.

M4 pays usage fees depending on how much data it

runs through the platform, says Melissa Popejoy, the

firm’s e-discovery specialist, who also holds system

administrator rights.

The platform is designed to allow administrators to

see how often users access the system, how long their

sessions last and what kind of features they use most,

Shah says. That means firms can ensure attorneys are

comfortable with the tools and are using them as intended,

maximizing the financial investment.

“A lot of people could be in the system, but not doing

it properly,” Shah says. “There are parameters within

Clearwell that will help you manage that.”

After installation, Symantec staff conducted training

seminars with the firm’s staff. They worked especially

closely with Popejoy to “train the trainer,” Holmes says.

Early on, Popejoy says her biggest hiccup was finding

the best way to connect with Symantec’s support

resources when she had questions about the new system.

The significant time difference between Hawaii and the

continental United States didn’t help, she says. Now, Popejoy

logs on to an online portal to submit questions, and reports

that she often receives answers within the same day.

“I would highly recommend Clearwell,” she says. “I think

there are three or four litigation tools we’ve used and this,

by far, is the best of all.”

Overall, the firm’s attorneys and paralegals have adapted

to the new system quickly, Holmes says: “For how powerful

a product it is, it is extremely intuitive.”

A New Way to WorkLitigation Associate Jordon Kimura says the platform

streamlines the discovery review process and provides

powerful search and filter tools.

“If we’re looking at someone’s emails and we see a

lot from Facebook or some travel site, Clearwell allows

us to group all those messages, which we know to be

not relevant to the case, and essentially tag them as

nonresponsive,” he says. “In the past, we would have gone

through email by email, so it was a very cumbersome and

time-consuming process.”

That, in fact, is one of the platform’s chief benefits,

Holmes says: the ability to filter out unimportant

documents so attorneys can focus on those that matter.

“It gets all that junk out of the way,” he says.

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CASE STUDY: ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY P

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Especially in cases that call for clients to produce all the

data from every hard drive of every employee, attorneys

may end up with an awful lot of “junk” to sort through. For

Kimura, if he has 20,000 documents and a few clicks on

Clearwell can eliminate 500 Facebook emails, that’s 500

fewer files that require an intensive review.

Kimura also uses Clearwell’s filters to drill down into the

information he needs, whether that means searching for

videos by file extension or capturing emails with certain

words or phrases. Filters allow attorneys to drill down on

file types, users, date ranges and other parameters.

“It’s incredibly customizable in terms of what sets of

data you want to look at,” he says.

Popejoy says Clearwell’s filter and search features, in

particular, are making attorneys’ jobs easier. An attorney

reviewing emails, for example, can filter on a sender’s

name and search for messages within a certain time frame.

“That’s a big deal because, in previous litigation

platforms, we did not have that ability to filter on a

person’s domain or name,” she says. “We now have the

ability to filter email metadata.”

An automated feature directs users to information they

might want to access based on what they are viewing. If

Kimura is reviewing an email, for instance, Clearwell will

identify other related messages, thereby allowing for a

more streamlined e-discovery review process.

The platform also enables attorneys to retrieve client data

much more quickly. When clients submit their discovery

data to the firm, Popejoy uploads the data to the platform

and the system is able to trim the data, excluding known

files using NIST list and deduplication. Litigation attorneys

and paralegals then conduct their searches and review the

documents. When finished, the teams provide instructions

to Popejoy on which documents will be produced and

who will prepare the electronic files for opposing counsel

(typically in native format on DVDs or a portable hard drive).

Popejoy says she received a couple of gigabytes’

worth of data from a client around 11 a.m. on a recent

Monday. After uploading the files, she was able to get the

information to an attorney later that same afternoon.

With previous litigation support tools, Popejoy says,

“It would take days and sometimes weeks, depending

on how much data, before they could start reviewing

documents, and that was frustrating.”

Staying Ahead of the CompetitionA primary advantage of technology-assisted reviews,

Holmes says, is that the faster lawyers can peruse data,

the faster they can develop legal strategies.

Holmes believes Clearwell has changed workflow

considerably at M4. In large part, he attributes that to the

ability of users to now work with documents in native

formats, while the old method involved converting email,

documents and images to PDFs.

Even when M4 lawyers and paralegals used optical

character recognition to scan files and make them

searchable, the process wasn’t seamless, Holmes says,

and it “took forever.”

“What we were able to do was use the introduction of

Clearwell to say, ‘You really have to get in the 21st century

and start reviewing documents natively,’ ” he says.

From a legal standpoint, native documents contain

all the metadata that’s lost when documents are

printed. That information could make a difference in a

case. Clearwell outputs documents in native formats,

and lawyers can redact information if needed. The firm

provides discovery to opposing counsel on DVDs or

portable hard drives.

The adoption also has enabled M4 to keep pace with

peer firms and to transition to e-discovery on its own

terms, rather than being forced to make an investment by

opposing counsel.

Holmes notes that many law firms resist making the

switch from paper processes until another firm insists on

receiving discovery materials electronically: “All you need

is one document request where the other side says, ‘I’m

no longer content with you printing all this stuff out and

handing me pieces of paper.’

“They really don’t have a leg to stand on at that point.

They have to get on board.”

For a firm of M4’s size, however, it was important to stay

ahead of the curve. Holmes says the new platform has

made that transition as easy as possible.

“You open a new case, point Clearwell to whatever

information you got from the client, and say ‘Go,’ ” Holmes

says. “It really is an amazingly well-thought-out product.”

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