0:05 – Michael Gibeault

Hi, I’m Michael Gibeault, with TCDI, and this is the next episode of TCDI Talks. I’m joined by my colleague Joe Anguilano, Managing Director. And today we’re talking about Enterprise Legal Management software and CVUnity. Welcome, Joe.

0:21 – Joe Anguilano

Thanks for having me, Michael.

0:23 – Michael Gibeault

Hey Joe, your article that you just wrote paints a clear picture of the challenges facing eDiscovery teams today. In your view, why has centralized data become such a pressing issue for everyone?

0:39 – Joe Anguilano

Yeah, it’s just a problem because, you know, when information like matter details, collections, legal holds, billing, review metrics, and this other information lives in separate tools, it becomes really difficult to get a comprehensive view of your legal operations in one place. Now, piecing that fragmented data together takes time, costs money.

And it raised the risk of missing key deadlines or, you know, sometimes even evidence. So, you know, by consolidating all these data points into a single source of truth, it helps teams leverage, you know, built-in analytics, and other tools that you wouldn’t otherwise have at your fingertips. Because, again, the data is typically in separate systems, right? So, by putting it all together into one platform and consolidating it, they’re more likely to make timely, data-driven decisions to, you know, really be able to keep matters on track.

1:30 – Michael Gibeault

So let’s talk about the impacts of these disconnected systems. So what are some of the risks these legal teams face when information is delayed or inconsistent or unavailable or especially in these high, you know, stakes or fast moving matters?

1:47 – Joe Anguilano

Yeah, I mean, there could be a few different things. Budget overruns is top of mind, right? So when people aren’t working off the same information or they don’t have the information they need at the right time and they’re trying to track it down, you know, it’s easy to, exceed your spend targets, without even knowing it. Right?

You can also run into rework and errors with your data, and your processes. You’ve got last minute fire drills. You know, you’ve got teams that have to scramble to correct issues at the 11th hour. So, you know, it creates confusions, inefficiencies, drives up costs, and slows down, decision making. So again, having that timely, comprehensive and cohesive information right at their fingertips, you know, helps avoid a lot of those pitfalls.

2:30 – Michael Gibeault

So from a collaboration standpoint, you know, how do these silos affect the way the in-house teams and outside counsel and even, you know, vendors work together?

2:41 – Joe Anguilano

Right. So, you know, it’s not just, you know, having multiple different systems, but it’s having multiple different, you know, vendors and providers and stakeholders also managing multiple different systems, right? So it makes it very hard to collaborate.

And ultimately it often results in, you know, each of these different parties relying on different information that they think is actually accurate when sometimes it’s not, right? So you know, again, duplicated tasks, you know, maybe conflicting instructions oftentimes can lead to bottlenecks while people are waiting for information, you know, to take action. Because no one’s entirely sure which of those figures are accurate.

So, you know, it can often muddy the water. And that’s why I think centralizing those key metrics and reports in one place where, you know, everyone knows that that’s, again, that single source of truth. It’s easily accessible. They know where to go. That information is at their fingertips, and it’s given to them at the, you know, at the right place, at the right time, is critical to, you know, staying aligned on budgets and deadlines. And really identifying issues and beginning to take action on them before it’s too late and before, you know, things escalate and get out of control. So, you know, you can have more productive collaboration, faster decisions, and, you know, ideally smoother eDiscovery workflows overall.

3:57 – Michael Gibeault

So ELM, and this is new to me, so we talk about Enterprise Legal Management software and how it can help eDiscovery teams move from being reactive to proactive in their litigation strategy. Tell me more about ELMs.

4:13 – Joe Anguilano

Yeah. So, you know, ELM software is kind of like the legal department’s mission control center and in many respects. So at its core, you know, it consolidates functionality, things like matter management, maybe spend and e-billing, it has built in advanced analytics.

But then, you know, ELMs are also often enriched through integrations with third party tools and data. Think of like, eDiscovery platforms. You know, collaboration platforms, pretty much anything that you can connect to the idea of being an ELM should then also be able to pull in that information, and report on it, run analytics on it in order to again, you know, provide that, single source of truth, centralized mission control center, for the legal operations team to kind of run their department.

In the eDiscovery context, for example, you know, such a platform would kind of unify things like the matter management, legal hold, collections, processing, hosting, maybe doc review metrics, spend data for those vendors, you know, kind of that one consolidated dashboard where oftentimes it’d be much more difficult to piece all that information together via spreadsheets or otherwise to, you know, run, analysis that will provide, you know, interesting and meaningful insights.

5:25 – Michael Gibeault

So that leads us to TCDI’s CVUnity. So you’ve been deeply involved in the development and implementation of CVUnity. Tell me, Joe, what is CVUnity, and what are some of the key challenges you were trying to solve for clients when you’re building out the platform?

5:44 – Joe Anguilano

Yeah, so CVUnity was developed to solve a lot of the challenges that I described already when it comes to, you know, data from legal operations being in many different disparate sources, disparate systems, and not really having one good way to pull that information together, and report on it, right? So CVUnity was originally developed with that thought in mind, essentially bringing, you know, the business intelligence tools and best practices typically used outside of legal in the business world into legal right.

And apply those philosophies, and you know, apply Lean Six Sigma, whatever it may be, whatever’s meaningful to the client, surface those KPIs, make them easily available, updated regularly. And so then they can go in and make those important decisions. Because, you know, again it’s really having that scattered data, all throughout, right? So CVUnity designed to kind of bring that all under one roof.

But then, you know, CVUnity suite as a whole, you know, has a lot more functionality than just that. You know, the CVUnity suite, besides just the control center that I described with the business intelligence tools and analysis, you know, it has collections management, it has legal hold, you know, discovery and data processing, AI functionality. So it’s really, you know, a suite of tools highlighted by some of these, BI capabilities, and then the analytics layer that we’ve built in.

If there’s fielded data, CVUnity can find a way to really make it, interesting to look at, explore, slice and dice and ultimately, you know, give you the information to make a data driven decision.

7:22 – Michael Gibeault

So let’s talk about the feedback you received from our clients using CVUnity thus far. Any results or insights that surprised you?

7:31 – Joe Anguilano

Just the overwhelming positive feedback. Just by, you know, the look and the esthetics of being able to visualize data and kind of bring it to life, right? You know, people really seem to enjoy that. And just looking at their data that they may be looking at, you know, for many years in a completely different way, right through these, through the analytics layer and the visualization tools built into CVUnity.

And then just the excitement, particularly around, “Hey, this is going to save us so much time!” You know, we typically, you know, are taking data from a spreadsheet manually each month or each quarter, you know, putting this into a PowerPoint and presenting it where, you know, a tool like CVUnity could, you know, regularly get that updated and refreshed and, you know, almost PowerPoint ready with little or no work. And so that’s very exciting just being able to save our clients time and effort so they can focus on, you know, more pressing tasks at hand.

And then just giving them the ability to explore and view their data in a completely different way. You know, a good example might be, you know, the jurisdiction map, right? So we are able to take things like, you know, where your cases are pending, you know, state, federal jurisdiction, different case statuses. And, you know, typically there would be a very manual process to map out that type of data, right, to see concentrations in different jurisdictions or areas. We were able to, to create that within CVUnity. And, you know, people just seem to love that. They’re very excited for whenever we show that, you know, mapping capability, right?

And that’s, again, you have the data, maybe in a spreadsheet, you have your different jurisdictions. But being able to visualize it in that new way, and being able to do that very easily and, you know, slice and dice it and have dynamic updates, it gets people really excited.

9:21 – Michael Gibeault

So Joe, what advice would you give to legal departments that are overwhelmed from trying to pull together data points from several different locations?

9:30 – Joe Anguilano

Yeah. You’re going to probably need to consider a tool, right? There are certain tools designed to do this. And so if you really want to make that time investment in order to do that, you know, I’d highly suggest, you know, starting with a tool that, you know, you can export multiple spreadsheets from, and bring them together and just start doing that analysis. Obviously, TCDI offers a tool and services along those lines.

But, try to not do everything all at once, right? So start small, get, you know, an initial win out the gate, right? So, you know, I’m able to combine these two different data sources to provide this meaningful insight and create this interesting report, right? So you got to find out, you know, what’s your biggest pain points? You know, is that also maybe the low-hanging fruit that you can attack first? And then just kind of go with a prioritized list because, you know, it’s a bit of an iterative process, right? You’ve got to start somewhere. And if you’re going to start somewhere, you know, start small, get a quick win and then just start to build off of it.

10:25 – Michael Gibeault

So Joe, if you had to summarize the core benefit of ELM platforms like CVUnity in one sentence, what would it be?

10:32 – Joe Anguilano

It is the mission control center for your legal team that will make everyone’s jobs easier, so that you can focus on your legal work and your litigation matters and not on, you know, consolidating data and spreadsheets and, you know, creating PowerPoints. That work should be done for you. So you can, you know, focus on other areas.

10:57 – Michael Gibeault

Well, thanks for joining us. And if you’d like to learn more about Enterprise Legal Management software and CVUnity, you can check out Joe’s article. We have it linked next to this video. And we’d love to get your feedback and your thoughts. Look for us on LinkedIn and join in to the discussion.

Thanks, Joe.

11:16 – Joe Anguilano

Thank you!