O’Melveny & Myers LLP, a global law firm, and H5, an information retrieval services firm, announced on 3 August an alliance that will provide O’Melveny clients with an alternative to traditional search methods for document discovery, review and analysis. Under the alliance, O’Melveny and H5 will work collaboratively with O’Melveny clients to consider possible applications of H5’s search functionality. The aim is to reduce cost and increase efficiency.
As my colleague Ron Friedmann suggested in his personal blog post, A BigLaw Watershed: O’Melveny Partners with H5 for EDD, this may be the first such public announcement from a BigLaw firm. The trend towards new approaches to cost-effective discovery, however, especially incorporating advanced technology, is clear. “Our clients face rapidly increasing litigation costs fueled in part by the mounting expense of document review,” said Richard Goetz, Chair of O’Melveny’s Class Actions practice group (see press release). He succinctly captures the central issue driving law firm thinking.
An increasing number of major law firms are reacting to the budget constraints faced by their corporate clients. They recognize the increasing competition among law firms in this down market and that the traditional delivery model, with its enormous costs, is unsustainable. Innovative firms are exploring methodologies available from specialist EDD providers.
The huge cost pressure represents a threat and opportunity for law firms in the competitive landscape. An array of processes and technologies to reduce cost are readily available. If firms ignore these tools, their corporate clients will adopt them directly or turn to providers who offer them. O’Melveny appears to recognize this, has publicly stated so, and is taking advantage of the opportunity.
In our experience, however, technology is only part of the answer. Irrespective of the review tool a litigation team chooses, they will be left with a sizable number of documents that require human review. General counsels need to consider carefully the most appropriate resource to conduct reviews. Options include law firm associates or staff attorneys, contract or temp lawyers that they or their outside counsel retain and manage, or offshore review teams (often working with onshore teams). With offshore review now well established and validated, an increasing number of corporations are using offshore review teams to further contain cost. And law firms are starting to respond in kind, also offering an offshore review alternative in some cases.
We see the law firm thinking evolving, with more and more offering offshore or multi shore document review and deploying data analytics or a more holistic integrated approach to discovery. But the common trend is clear: manage cost (i.e. reduce cost and make cost more predictable) by managing the volume of data that funnels into review and delivering review at a lower cost while ensuring a defensible production. Clearly, the greatest savings come from leveraging both technology and global managed review options.
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