Customer Story

Epiq Automates and Enhances Its Litigation Spend Analytics Offering

A modern data platform strengthens Epiq’s data monetization efforts and improves internal IT operations

Analytics8 has been a great partner to Epiq. The consultants were knowledgeable, incredibly responsive and allowed us to realize our vision of automating our legal spend insights against an aggressive timeline. All our stakeholders, including leadership, clients, and the extended team members, are delighted by the results.
The data models developed by Analytics8 in our Snowflake environment now automate the data ingestion process and allow us to scale the solution to various clients, saving us time, money and improving our customer satisfaction.

Problem: Bespoke Spend Analysis Causes Scalability Challenges

As the leading eDiscovery solution provider, Epiq helps its clients identify, collect, review, and produce data in preparation for lawsuits and investigations. Part of what makes Epiq a leader in the legal services industry is the guidance that Epiq provides to its clients to help make the eDiscovery phase as efficient and cost effective as possible, while also adhering to legal defensibility guidelines. To further improve its leadership position, Epiq had developed an advanced analytics model to help clients accurately baseline their “true” Discovery spend and identify significant cost savings of 15-30%. While the analysis met their client needs in highlighting cost savings, Epiq wanted to automate and streamline this analysis so that it could scale its output and help more clients gain visibility into their litigation spend and find ways to reduce costs.

Solution: Insightful Analytics Dashboards Supported by a Cloud-Based Data Architecture

Knowing that Epiq wanted a front-end reporting solution plus a cloud-based data model to support the application, the Analytics8 team initiated a dual-path project in which the business and IT teams worked in parallel to launch a fully functioning application.

For the analytics solution, we worked with Epiq’s business stakeholders to collect the dashboard design styles in use across Epiq, as well as the analysis outputs to rapidly produce dashboard mock-ups. Working collaboratively with the subject matter experts, the team refined the initial mock-ups, then thoroughly tested the outputs to confirm their accuracy. The final reports provide a detailed view into litigation spending and a set of dashboards that tell a clear story for Epiq’s clients of where to locate hidden cost savings and how to generate immediate benefits.

In parallel, we worked with Epiq’s IT team to automate the data load and transformation process. Using Snowflake, we built a repeatable, scalable process in which all transformation logic was completely automated to support the dashboard. The data model was developed entirely within Snowflake, with heavy usage of SQL and additional scripting, so that Epiq could maintain the solution. The process was built with scalability in mind to allow for data to be rapidly ingested in the future.

We used an iterative project approach to integrate feedback from stakeholders regarding look, feel, and functionality of the reports throughout the development process. And because of the parallel development path, the data model solution was in place when the dashboard was ready for production.

Results: New Data Offering Saves Money, Strengthens Customer Relationships, and Creates New Business Opportunities

Parallel development of the dashboard and data ingestion process meant Epiq was able to go to market months ahead of its projected timeline. By automating the manual data manipulation process Epiq was able to reduce resource-intensive development efforts significantly. The improvements made to the process will enable Epiq to rapidly identify and visualize cost savings opportunities to its clients.

While the solution will initially be used to support Litigation Spend Analysis, Epiq continues to mature the platform into a solution that clients can use to manage spend holistically and track results delivered by Epiq across its broader service footprint. Epiq continues to work with Analytics8 to provide those further extensions to its platform in a nimble and collaborative way.

Company Overview

Epiq, a global technology-enabled services leader to the legal services and corporations, takes on large-scale, increasingly complex tasks for corporate counsel, law firms, and business professionals with efficiency, clarity, and confidence. Clients rely on Epiq to streamline the administration of business operations, class action and mass tort, court reporting, eDiscovery, regulatory, compliance, restructuring, and bankruptcy matters. Epiq subject-matter experts and technologies create efficiency through expertise and deliver confidence to high-performing clients around the world.

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