When law firms are looking for a solution for document review and eDiscovery software, due diligence is important. So to review and compare options, we’ve compiled some of the top options for eDiscovery solutions on the market. Let's see how they stack up against Digital WarRoom!
Document Review Tools in the 21st Century
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which guide matters of discovery record requests in civil litigation, were heavily amended in 2006. This change was made specifically to allow for electronically stored information - digital data - to be discoverable. eDiscovery (electronic discovery) refers to a legal process of “discovering” electronic data which is potentially relevant to litigation.
Looking back, it’s clear that all forms of evidence can be crucial to uncovering the truth and coming to a fair resolution of legal disputes. This search for truth is one of the values of the U.S. legal system. Thus, as we move toward more digital communication, we need laws that specifically pertain to this evidence.
The United States, among other countries like Canada and the UK, allows parties to subpoena the opposing party or even a third party for documents. This is not the case in many other countries.
Electronically Stored Information
The 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure included a specific provision that declared electronically stored information (ESI) to be discoverable in U.S. litigation. Now, almost all information that was once managed as paper documents is stored electronically.
The rise of technology has created a growing need for attorneys and legal teams to have the baseline technological proficiency to review these documents, understand the metadata behind them and ensure proper discovery of all potentially relevant information.
The most common form of electronic evidence is email, but eDiscovery can extend far beyond that to a range of data types that could be drawn from a desktop, server, cloud platform, mobile device, or even an internet of things device.
Data Processing in the Modern Era
In the 20th century, Discovery obligations were delivered as printed pages for 5-10 cents per page. Tagging and organization of documents as legal facts were achieved primarily through post-it notes on copies of paper assembled in conference rooms also known as War Rooms.
Enter the 21st century digital age.
By the turn of the century, the explosion in information, email, and electronic documents (ESI) rendered paper discovery untenable. Technologists turned their attention to dispute resolution processes, workflows, and software. Most software in the early 2000s consisted of technical point solutions not designed for use by attorneys and paralegals.
eDiscovery Software Options for Law Firms
Legal evidence and the corresponding discovery process have become overwhelmingly electronic. Meanwhile, attorneys must consider what data is out there that could help them serve their clients.
Legal professionals must keep up with the drastic rise in the creation and use of electronically stored information (ESI). An eDiscovery tool and corresponding eDiscovery workflow will allow law firms and legal teams to meet obligations while managing budget and risk.
Digital WarRoom is an eDiscovery software tool that can be deployed as a cloud-based eDiscovery solution or installed on-premise on your local machine.
Discovery software can accelerate processing, early case assessment, review, multiple document productions, and data management for law firms, legal departments, corporate legal teams, and government agencies. This software is fully do-it-yourself (DIY), meaning legal professionals can process, review and produce electronic documents within a single end-to-end platform without the need for a third party to intervene.
How Digital WarRoom Stacks Up Against Competitors
To understand the value of what Digital WarRoom has to offer, it can be helpful to look at the other top two competitors on the market: Logikcull and Everlaw.
Logikcull
Logikcull brings affordability and price predictability to eDiscovery. They offer flat-rate, per-matter pricing. Simple, powerful Culling Intelligence helps clients filter documents, tag files, and redact information quickly—in a platform that is easy to use.
However, with lower costs there come some downsides. Users have complained about a lack of customer service. One customer griped that “the guys over at Logikcull will do everything possible to avoid a screen-share — they do everything via text.”
Additionally, this bargain-priced tech comes with some flaws, as well. “The most serious problem is that if you try to tag too quickly, Logikcull can fail to save your work, [and] can fail silently so that you don't know unless you look for it,” noted one unhappy customer.
While Logikcull touts its culling technology, other users find it lacking in TAR. “It would be better if they could include a technology-assisted review feature, which brings artificial intelligence into the cloud and the system itself. It would be great savings in terms of time and costs as you won't have a person manually going into a dense asset of documents and doing it.”
Everlaw
Everlaw uses advanced technology to solve complex legal challenges. The collaborative, cloud-based software for litigation and investigations, Everlaw empowers law firms, corporations, and government agencies to discover important information, illuminate critical insights, and act on key evidence.
However, this platform also has its share of issues. Users have complained that search functions are kind of finicky using booleans, and the native viewer for MS office documents is very flawed. Spreadsheets often fail to open at all, and larger documents can choke the system. Additionally, the software cannot accommodate large PDFs.
Why Digital WarRoom is Still the Best eDiscovery Tool for Legal Teams
"For both analysis and production DWR is over the top better than any other discovery software around." - real user review, July 2022.
Digital WarRoom offers easy set-up, world-class customer service, useful features, and all at a great price.
Price
A comprehensive secure platform, with best-in-class, included service and unlimited training. Don’t pay processing fees for useless data. The first month is always $250, while we help you cull the noise and irrelevant ESI. An unbeatable price of between $1 to $10 GB/Month hosted. Process, review, and produce documents with advanced filtering, privilege log, redactions, annotations, and a range of analysis tools.
And you never have to worry about further fees! Digital WarRoom prides itself on making pricing information available on our website. There are no additional fees besides what is expressly stated here. This means no processing fees, no matter setup fees, no matter migration fees, and no support or training fees in hosted subscriptions. We take transparency seriously.
Additional professional services are available at an hourly rate but are not required. Once your matter is set up, all standard features are available DIY.
PRO SOFTWARE: ON-PREM
- $1,995/YEAR/LICENSE
- Unlimited Matters
- Single User License
- No Data Hosting Costs
- No Processing Fees
- Unlimited Email Support Desk
- 1 Hour of Installation Support
- 2 Hours of Training
SINGLE MATTER: HOSTED
- $250/MONTH
- 1 Matter Unlimited Users
- 25 GBs Included
- $10/GB thereafter
- No Processing Fees
- Unlimited Email Support Desk
- Unlimited Training
- Month to Month Tiered Pricing
PRIVATE CLOUD: HOSTED
- $2,000/MONTH
- Unlimited Matters and Users
- 500 GBs Included
- $1/GB thereafter
- No Processing Fees
- Management Console
- Unlimited Email Support Desk
- Unlimited Training
- Starting at $1,000 with 200GBs
Solutions
Digital WarRoom offers key features for law firms of all sizes to help you save money and win cases. “I own a small firm and I used DWR for a complicated business dispute against a difficult adversary with significant resources,” shared one customer.
“In spite of this imbalance, my small firm was able to keep pace every step of the way. Most importantly, the DWR team was incredibly responsive and supported my firm when we needed it. I can wholeheartedly recommend this product to other small (and large) firms!”
While other eDiscovery tools on the market are geared toward either small firms only (with limited solutions) or large firms only (and thus cost-prohibitive), Digital WarRoom's platform offers broad features to meet a variety of needs, robust reporting, and workflow management.
Searchable PDFS
More and more courts and customers are requesting text searchable PDFs. Digital WarRoom now provides greater flexibility to meet that request. During export, a PDF will be provided and for all documents imaged in 10.1, it will be text searchable.
For produced documents, OCR must be generated after the production is endorsed to insure any redacted text is not provided on export. Additional updates have been made which may be helpful to your team
Near-line Data Storage
Near-line is an intermediate type of data storage that represents a compromise between online storage (supporting frequent, very rapid access to data) and offline storage/archiving (used for backups or long-term storage, with infrequent access to data).
It is also now offered as an option with our Single Matter and Private Cloud-hosted subscriptions. Archive inactive data in the Digital WarRoom cloud. At any time, we can spin up your data into an active matter for document review.
Private Cloud
A cloud-based eDiscovery suite for all matters and your entire team:
- A Long-Term Solution - For all matters in one subscription
- 50 Included Users
- Unparalleled Training And Onboarding - From our experienced team of legal professionals
- Management Console - Cost recovery tool for viewing admin level metrics and requesting split invoices
Customer Service
What places Digital WarRoom far and above competitors is responsive customer service. Help desk hours are 6 AM – 6 PM Pacific time from Monday through Friday. During these hours, someone from either our Seattle, Dallas or New York office will assist you. We even occasionally check our support tickets outside of these hours! So if you have an urgent request, we will assist at our discretion as soon as we notice your ticket.
If you have a fast-approaching deadline that requires services outside of business hours, you can help us best serve you by notifying us of this deadline during our normal hours. If you say “all hands on deck”, we’ll make it our priority to help you get your project done in your time frame, whether that involves help desk email support, project management, or professional services.
DWR Customer Service Provides:
- Help Desk: Support is available via our email help desk
- Senior Professionals: Open access to senior electronic discovery professionals with decades of knowledge
- Speedy Response: Guaranteed help desk response within 4 business hours (Monday-Friday from 9 AM EST to 9 PM EST)
- Professional Services: Our subscription packages and included training are backed by professional services which can help your team meet deadlines in a crunch or solve technical issues – offered only to our customers
Security
Security is our top priority. When you join the Digital WarRoom family, we will work tirelessly to keep your trust and protect your valuable client data. We have perfected our product and its data protection over our 20 years of industry experience.
DWR Security Includes:
- Digital WarRoom Hosting Center: DWR owns and manages its servers and infrastructure
- No Third Parties: Client data cannot be accessed by third parties or subcontractors like AWS and Azure
- Advanced Security: Our strict physical access controls and network security give our customers peace of mind with the knowledge that we proactively safeguard their consumer information
- Required Protocol: Two-factor authentication is required
- Protected Access Points: Digital WarRoom professionals will not access your data without direct permission
Bottom Line
When it comes to document review, you need a solution that does what it is intended to do -and at a reasonable cost. Digital WarRoom offers eDiscovery software that meets the needs of small and large firms, with excellent customer service to provide the support you need.
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