Introducing Everlaw Staging Drive
As the practice of ediscovery continues evolving to meet the demands that come with skyrocketing amounts and different types of data, legal professionals are looking for different ways to process and store it all. Between texts, emails, voicemails, social media messages, and dozens of other forms of communication, all of that data can be used as evidence, which means it must be ingested, reviewed, and organized effectively.
And if that sounds like a headache, it’s because it is. Legal professionals are drowning in this near-unlimited amount of data, and struggling to piece it all together.
That’s led many organizations to adopt tools that allow them to handle this growing volume of data more easily. Teams want to gain early insights into their data so they can assess the viability of a case, understand risk exposure, and quantify potential costs at the onset of a matter – before they tackle the core work of document review.
In an effort to offer Everlaw users options at all phases of a matter’s lifecycle, we’re excited to introduce Staging Drive as a space where customers can hold pre-processing data so they’re able to collect, preserve, and store files and folders before uploading to review.
As with each new Everlaw feature, we’ve prioritized our customers, whether it’s constantly iterating to create a superior ediscovery platform, giving users a multifaceted ECA environment, and now offering Staging Drive for convenient data storage with enterprise-grade security.
How Staging Drive Raises the Bar
Organizations that store data in various systems and tools, such as in on-prem storage, or cloud-based storage such as Google Drive, Office 365, Sharepoint, and elsewhere, can find it difficult to gather everything in one place and transfer it as needed. This can slow down the whole organization, and inhibit the ability to quickly respond to investigations or prepare for a case. Each environment also provides different capabilities for initial culling, searching, and reviewing data, which can create an inefficient system of cobbled-together tools.
Everlaw’s Staging Drive helps to centralize more data in earlier phases of matters in Everlaw, while also streamlining the flow of data from collection to review. Users can create and name folders to organize container files, rename files, assign custodians on the fly, add descriptions to documents, and sort uploaded files and folders by a variety of fields. That way, when the data is ready to be uploaded, there isn’t any time wasted trying to collect and organize information.
Additionally, the organizational actions made in Staging Drive will be maintained after data gets moved out of Staging Drive for investigation or review, all within Everlaw's highly secure solution. For example, if a user renames a file and sorts it into a folder while in the Staging Drive, that will also be reflected once the data is moved out of Staging Drive and into a review environment.
Staging Drive Benefits
Staging Drive offers legal teams a better option than settling for storing information in inflexible, less secure environments, where data grows and becomes more disorganized. Here are a few of Staging Drive’s practical benefits.
Improve Data Management
With the explosion in discoverable data often requiring teams to go through terabytes of information and millions of documents during the ediscovery process, keeping everything organized can feel like a tall task.
Staging Drive offers a solution to this by providing an environment that users can access when they need it, without delay. The uploading process is simple, and lets users get started sorting through their data the moment they move it for review. That means not just greater security, but also more accessibility to data the moment it’s needed.
By centralizing raw, inactive files in one place, Staging Drive helps users consolidate and simplify their data management. Users can control which files they upload to Staging Drive, as well as sort and filter data, and promote files to ECA or Review. Plus, users can maintain an original copy of their data throughout the entire process to help ensure a source of truth and traceability.
Increase Security
Since many cases deal with terabytes worth of sensitive data, security is consistently at the top of the list of needs for legal teams. They need a trusted environment to store not just their data, but their clients’ data as well. Everlaw’s stringent security protocols also extend to Staging Drive.
Organization admins have full control over the uploading, promoting, and deleting of files and folders within Staging Drive.
Leverage Speed and Reliability
Staging Drive comes with the speed and reliability of the Everlaw platform already built in, allowing data to be moved and organized seamlessly. Processing speeds of 900K documents per hour mean data can be quickly uploaded and staged almost instantly. Additionally, since Everlaw’s average annual uptimes exceed 99.9%, users can view their files at all hours, and access data the moment it’s needed.
A New Data Storage Solution
The release of Staging Drive marks a new way for clients to store their pre-processing data in a low-cost environment on Everlaw. Users can leverage Everlaw’s security, speed, and reliability to access that data anytime they need it, and organize it effectively prior to moving it for review on the platform.
Staging Drive expands Everlaw’s coverage of the litigation lifecycle, delivering durable value for customers throughout a matter’s lifetime and beyond.
