Today, increasing eDiscovery workloads continue to cause headaches, while corporate GCs and firms are simultaneously seeking increased efficiency and quality. Hence Esquify, a cutting-edge legal technology start-up that is augmenting the current in-person litigation document review process with a virtual solution using its own patented and machine learning technology.
In an interview with Insights success, Drew Stern, the CEO and Co-founder of Esquify shares some insightful views on how the company’s technology drives accountability and oversight via detailed performance stats on individuals, teams and overall review progress.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Drew and Insights Success:
- Give a brief overview of the company, its solutions and services?
Esquify is the world’s first AI-Driven, workforce management platform for law. As the recent winner of the US Legal Tech Venture Day 2018, we are changing the st game by using 21 century technology to improve and augment human, legal, document review within eDiscovery.
In an industry that has been struggling to contain costs and achieve reliable results, Esquify’s platform delivers benchmarking tools and analytics that not only heighten cost efficiency but also increase overall accountability and transparency of review teams. Esquify’s groundbreaking SaaS platform is being used globally to run reviews with major Legal Service Providers, Fortune 100 companies and AM Law 100 firms. We’re venture-backed, Relativity integrated and award winning.
- How do you diversify your eDiscovery solutions in ways that would benefit your clientele?
We diversify via our core philosophy that technology can power review teams’ with improved performance. Esquify transforms the document review experience by employing patented, machine learning to supervise teams of reviewers simultaneously and at scale wherever they are worldwide. Equipped with communications features built for law and real-time analytics on performance and progress, the solution drives 25% more efficient reviews and client costsavings of 25%–45% or greater.
- Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.
When we started Esquify, we had a vision of an eDiscovery industry that relied on technology to enhance review team performance, wherever the reviewers worked: in a review center, in a bull pen, in another city, country or working from home. You see, technology as an assist to reviewing attorney’s efficiency is an entirely new innovation. Document review and its supervision have historically been completely manual, and quite inefficient to boot. While there has been tremendous tech investment in the document collection/collation aspect of eDiscovery, little attention has been paid to the human element of the process- where the documents and the teams of attorneys reviewing them intersect.
Our stumble-upon was in how greatly our tech could actually impact reviewer performance, manager performance and eDiscovery quality. There was a huge gap to fill and our tech is making a big difference in filling it. For example, we can drive over 40% increase in reviewer performance, increase reviewer focus on document review by over 250% and provide measurable quality insights. These successes have emboldened us to drive forward with new innovations and new features that further enhance our platform for clients.
- How does the company contribute towards making the industry better?
Two ways – through innovation and workplace diversity within eDiscovery While we’re a leading technology company, we’re innovators at our core. We see the possible, and we go out there and create against a real need. We created Esquify to deliver against real pain points in the industry and our innovation is driving performance and accountability widely in the industry
We’re also huge workplace diversity advocates. We founded Esquify with a diverse team which led to our big-tent, out of the box thinking. Diversity and inclusion, where everyone feels like they have a seat at the table and the ability to voice their opinion, is incredibly important to us. So, we regularly speak and write on the importance of diversity in eDiscoveryleading an ever important dialogue around inclusion.
- Tell us about the Founder/CEO/Management of the company and his experience and influences in this field?
I founded Esquify with my husband Scott Stuart who is an accomplished attorney and technology executive. I come from a background of high-tech and used my real-world experiences to lead our team and create a solution that addressed real pain-points that Scott and I were seeing within eDiscovery. We pulled outside technology best practices into law.
Prior to Esquify, I amassed a portfolio of experience in creating and managing successful start-ups, strategic alliances and partnership ecosystems at Salesforce, American Express, Buddy Media, Sprout Social and completed marquee projects with VCs, AM Law 100 firms, legal service providers, major social networks and best-in-class analytics providers.
These experiences have given me the business knowledge to start and lead Esquify to success and receive some awesome recognition along the way including, being named to “Chicago’s Notable LGBTQ Executives 2018” list by Crain’s Chicago Business to “40 Under 40” by M&AAdvisor.
- Where does Esquify see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?
We see ourselves continuing to grow, innovate and see our technology used widely within the industry. Not only that, we also see our technology being used to address other pain-points both within and outside of law.
- Considering the rising number of eDiscovery solution providers, how does Esquify stand out from its competitors?
We stand out from traditional players who are not relying on real-time analytics and big data to drive performance of their discovery teams. Through our unique approach focused on the interplay of technology and human performance, we enhance and augment the capabilities of legal teams, without replacing the great work they are doing.
Our clients have seen awesome results and the truth is in the metrics. They have seen reviewer efficiency rise by 20-45%, review cost savings of up to 40%, increased review focus by over 250% and major insights into individual and team performance that have led directly to enhanced quality. Our customers love the accountability and measurement we bring in realtime, directly to their fingertips.