Law firms face numerous challenges in operating their practices. The large volumes of data, compliance requirements, and document reviews lead to high operational costs. Relativity is an e-discovery and legal data platform that helps law practices manage their data, reduce expenses, and increase efficiency.
The operational needs of law practices involve administrative functions, document storage, data maintenance, reporting, and stakeholder access. Managing this data is expensive, and data management stages add to costs. As practices accumulate great quantities of data, they need more storage. When data is not managed properly, that storage becomes overcrowded. Eliminating data means sending Matters to cold storage, erasing duplicate data, and finding fragmented data. However, practices may have problems with scalability, where they have difficulty growing or trimming their storage space.
Relativity has four essential data stages—Staging, Repository, Review, and Cold Storage—to help reduce operational costs in law firms. Practices can utilize these to save time and money. The stages that you use for expenses depend on your Relativity subscription, but the basic ones are as follows.
Staging Area
The Staging area is where you upload, transform, and organize data. This phase is before data is processed and imported into Relativity. Storage bandwidth is based on your subscription plan. With Relativity, you prepare client data before importation, create storage, export information like Matters, and save searches, folders, and subfolders. The Staging area aids in measuring how much storage you need before the later stages of the data lifecycle, thereby cutting operational storage costs.
Repository Workspace
The Repository workspace is for early case assessment of processing. It stores Matters and data that you may not be actively using. This area is where you store and compile documents for a Review workspace. The Repository helps cut operational costs in law firms by storing data that you are not yet using but may need in the future. Its organizational and storage functions enable you to manage your information and storage costs. However, be aware that document review is not supported, and exceeding the number of unique documents can trigger additional costs.
Review Workspace
The Review area helps you manage data through duplication detection, clustering, and analytics. Here, you review data for organizing, coding, and annotating for quality control using batch sets. You save on operational costs by identifying keywords and phrases in organizational documents and sending this data to the correct workspace stages. This level of organization enables you to save time and money. For example, Matters in the Review workspace can be moved back to the Repository stage as data to be stored for the future.
Cold Storage
Cold Storage is where you store data files that are no longer current. Examples are old Matters, administrative files like invoices, and similarly outdated information. Cold Storage helps operational costs in law firms by separating the data that you currently use from the older data that you may only need for administrative and compliance purposes. Without Cold Storage, finding relevant information can cost you employee hours and client confidence in your practice’s organizational competence.
Operational cost containment is essential for law practices, as it affects financial stability and profitability, investments, and client attraction. The critical benefits include:
CaseFlow offers operational solutions to cut costs and develop your practice. These can help you manage the Relativity stages to maximize efficiency.
Staging Solutions
CaseFlow in the staging area aids you with uploading, transformation, and organization. Matters may go to the wrong stages in the data lifecycle without organization. Staging solutions from CaseFlow automatically prepare client data for import into other stages. They also conserve storage space in later stages, cutting operational costs.
Repository Solutions
In the Repository workspace, adequate but not redundant storage is essential. CaseFlow automatically compiles data and stores it. This automation saves human-resource hours because it cuts operational costs by storing data that you are not yet using. Processing and filtering data occur without tedious manual work, thereby easily pushing data to the next stage.
Review Solutions
Operational costs can increase in the Review workspace when dealing with large data volumes. Redundant information, fragmented data, and old Matters lead to higher storage costs. With CaseFlow, you can continuously monitor Matters and automatically manage data. Monitoring leads to lower data volumes and fewer Matters, thereby reducing storage requirements and operational costs.
Cold Storage Solutions
In the Cold Storage stage, CaseFlow can help you manage old data files, as it automatically separates current data from older data. You also save time that would otherwise be spent manually separating data.
Saving on operational costs is critical for your practice to thrive. The preliminary Staging, Repository, Review, and Cold Storage are costly solutions, even though Relativity can help manage your costs by easing storage woes throughout the data lifecycle. With CaseFlow automation, storage operational costs are reduced by removing manual Matter management, among other changes. This automation offers an efficient, cost-conscious way to securely manage accountable and compliant data.
Stop letting inefficient processes drain your firm's profitability. Every hour spent on manual case management and disorganized workflows is an hour that could be spent generating revenue. Your clients deserve better, and so does your bottom line. CaseFlow delivers streamlined case management, automated workflows, and real-time insights that free your team to focus on what matters most: practicing law profitably. Ready to drive real efficiency and savings? Discover how CaseFlow can transform your firm's operations.