LegalTech Startup Spotlight — eDiscovery Assistant (Perspective)

Editor’s Note: The author of this post is a New York attorney who works at a law practice management software company.

Ever since the Federal Rules were amended in December 2006 to require that electronically stored evidence be preserved and subject to discovery during litigation, eDiscovery has been a big business. Companies offering software designed to identify, sort, and analyze ediscovery data sprang up over night and now there are too many to count.

One reason there are so many companies focused on ediscovery is because it’s becoming a more complex frontier to navigate due to the overwhelming amount digital data being created in today’s increasingly paperless business world. As a result, not only is it more difficult to process electronic information, it’s likewise challenging for lawyers tasked with managing complex litigation and the vast amounts of digital data involved in each case.

Enter eDiscovery Assistant, software designed to help lawyers stay abreast of changes in the rapidly changing field of ediscovery by curating resources for litigators, including rules, case digests, checklists, templates, and more. Kelly Twigger is the CEO of eDiscovery Assistant and is also an attorney with ESI Attorneys, a firm that focuses exclusively on electronic discovery and information law. According to Kelly, she decided to launch the software after noticing that attorneys were struggling with keeping up with changes in the area of ediscovery: “I got so many questions and inquiries from colleagues asking me to point them to case law or rules, or provide a form from our database, that I finally decided to make the constantly evolving database of rules, case law, forms, and checklists that we use at ESI Attorneys available to anyone who needs it.”

eDiscovery Assistant was first released as an iPad app in 2013, and more recently the company rolled out a web-based version of the application with more advanced functionality in May 2016. It is a subscription-based service and is designed to be the starting point for all discovery issues in a case. “It’s the first place to start to answer your questions about eDiscovery or to refresh yourself on the process you need to undertake when picking up eDiscovery for a new case,” she says. “For example, if you need to know whether and on what basis you can request information from Facebook in a case, you can find all the cases that address Facebook across the country in two clicks using our specific tagging infrastructure in case law.”

Since launching the software, she’s learned more than a few lessons. “Any product requires getting it to market — the greatest product isn’t any good if no one knows about it or uses it. That takes time and costs money, so don’t expect fast returns,” she explains. “The other big lesson we learned was not to tie our initial launch to an unproven delivery method like the iPad — although our app was gorgeous and delivered tremendous value, the iPad was never adopted by lawyers as we thought it would be.”

After 3 years on the market, Kelly has gained lots of experience and offers the following insight for other entrepreneurs who are thinking about developing a software product for the legal industry: “First, the legal space is ripe for technology, but legal professionals tend to be technology averse in comparison to other verticals. While the state of the market means great opportunity for those entering the legal tech space (and opportunity for disruptive technologies), it’s challenging to convert legal professionals who may view technology’s efficiencies as being revenue loss. Even though the conversion could be slow, the opportunity is fantastic. Be patient, they’ll come around. Second, know the space you are getting into. Research, research, research and find out if folks are willing to pay before you build it.”