Exploring the Basics of Summation Legal Software
Summation Legal Software is a software program that’s primarily used for managing and organizing data from legal cases. It’s designed to help legal professionals handle large volumes of information efficiently and effectively. Many different types of professionals in the legal industry use Summation Legal Software, including paralegals, litigators, legal support staff, and attorneys themselves. It’s easy to understand why a legal professional, or their team, would need such a tool, given the vast amounts of data involved with many legal cases. All of the text, documents, and numbers for a case have to be organized in a logical and orderly fashion, if attorneys and their support staff are going to be able to work with them properly. Even if they’re able to organize such contents, they then have to be able to recall and search them easily, so that they can quickly find what they’re looking for. Summation Legal Software addresses both of these potential issues, and it’s become an important and well-respected component of many legal teams. It’s especially useful during pre-trial preparation, and it has been used by major corporations and government agencies ever since it was introduced in the 1980s . Organizing data is merely one job that Summation Legal Software fulfills. It also performs two other major jobs; data retrieval and archiving. In fact, it’s one of the best retrieval software programs available on the market today, performing dual purposes of data searching and data retrieval. The company says that its program, Summation Cloud, is the most advanced document review solution for the legal profession. When handling immense cases that are over 10 terabytes, it’s essential to have such an advanced and thorough solution, and software that can pull open documents quickly, while remaining in compliance with ESI (electronically stored information) discovery requests. As the program’s name implies, it has a number of basic tools and features that lawyers and their teams can use for defense and plaintiff purposes – along with tools for managing any electronic evidence. There are also modules for attorneys’ task and time management purposes, as well as features that can display evidence in chronological order, which can be very helpful for fact and timeline preparation. For cases where attorneys are going to be using demonstrable evidence in court at a trial, these functions come in particularly handy.
Key Features of Summation Legal Software
To give you a clear idea of the value of this software, here are some of its core functions:
E-discovery: An advanced e-discovery platform to help you manage and control the entire process of obtaining, electronically reviewing, and analyzing recorded information. The e-discovery solution allows for optimization of e-discovery workflows and minimizes the number of required applications.
Document management: Allows users to maintain document organization and they can easily add, remove, and delete documents to folders. This avoids document duplication and provides a clear document records list.
Case analysis: Provides a visual overview of your case. This means that you can quickly identify events, issues, phases and document types. You can also control the timeline, events and activities.
Electronic File Room: Project organizers determine what documents are kept in the electronic filing room. To maintain consistency, users can only upload documents after the project manager has granted permission.
Data management and reporting: Allows for building a clear overview of your project with reports. These reports make it easy to track project advancement, identify missing documents, and address issues.
Email: Integrates email to maintain a log of communication for all parties involved. Emails can be redirected from Microsoft Outlook to Summation, and are stored in a chronological order. The good thing with this e-mail management feature is that funds are not consumed when forwarding emails.
Advantages of Summation Legal Software
Summation Legal Software provides users with numerous benefits. One of the most obvious is an increase in efficiency. The process of reviewing, summarizing, and coding case documents is made much simpler with the use of this type of software. An attorney can search and analyze information without having several different programs open. This all-in-one tool allows the person working on the case to complete the necessary tasks quickly and efficiently. All of the software’s various tools can be accessed from the same place. No one wants to spend valuable hours looking for information in multiple locations or trying to remember which program was used for which task.
Walsh has said that the majority of the attorneys that he works with use summation as their core software. He states, "This is primarily because they have become so reliant upon and comfortable with its multiple capabilities and its ease of use". He thinks that most attorneys find this software so easy to use because they have the advantage of first being exposed to the program while students in school. This has provided them with a "leg up". No client wants their attorney to lose money and time learning how to use a new program. It is beneficial to have a better understanding of the software before it is needed to prepare for trial. It is much more efficient and cost-effective to have the legal staff that is already familiar with this type of software assist in the legal review, instead of trying to navigate the learning process at that time.
The ability to easily collaborate with others is an additional benefit of Summation Legal Software. This is a major advantage to using this technology. The document database allows multiple people to work on the documents simultaneously. It is faster than managing hard copies of all of the documents involved; not to mention less drawing attention to the case by those that would prefer the matter stay private. Virtual rooms are available to allow a team to work on this from multiple locations. It provides an ease that paper documents could never hope to match. Allowing people who need access to the documents the ability to do so from anywhere is priceless when time is of the essence.
Organizing the documents is a lot easier when it is all done using the same program. That provides a consistency that is hard to match when multiple platforms are being used. There are many methods available for organizing the documents. Inside of the program are options for marking the documents that help with organizing them. This is a huge time saver. Being able to sort the documents by different fields or information is something that a hard copy cannot do. When you combine that with the ability to collaborate with your team, turn around is much quicker than using traditional legal methods.
Time is the biggest benefit of using Summation Legal Software to handle a case. Having so much of the information at your fingertips provides the ability to go through the documents quickly. The only limitation to the amount of information in a case is the amount of space on your server. The program comes with a wide range of features, so you can choose those that apply to your case. The live support available to the user is a huge bonus and it rarely fails to provide assistance quickly. The technology has been used in many cases and multiple jurisdictions. This software provides the reviewer with the tools that they need to navigate the situation successfully. The world is moving towards more digital processing, so it only makes sense that the legal aspects would switch over, as well.
How Summation Legal Software Streamlines Legal Processes
One of the primary advantages of legal software is how it integrates into a firm’s workflow. Legal software should be a supportive tool that streamlines as many processes as possible so that lawyers can spend more time working on substantive parts of their job and less time on menial tasks. There are many ways that Summation Legal Software does just that.
For example, properly utilizing and integrating Summation into a firm’s case workflows results in a more efficient, streamlined process when it comes to reviewing data and compiling evidence. A Summation blog post highlights the utility and efficiency of using Summation Legal Software while referencing a case where a firm bolstered its case by over a million dollars after using the software to review email data. The firm was facing a multi-million dollar verdict in a complicated case where opposing counsel had presented its evidence via email, and as a result, there was a large volume of email data to review. The firm utilized Summation to review the data through coded search terms to, "preserve their case strategy." Without Summation, the law firm would have probably lost the case.
Other tasks that are more seamless with the use of Summation include: document management, collaboration and archive and retrieval. Summation enables users to manage and archive paper documents with ease so that it is easier for attorneys to revisit them in the future when necessary. Even better, Summation software enables users to convert documents into a searchable format so that keywords can be indexed and searched when needed.
Summation vs Other Legal Software
Summation Legal Software stands out in the market with its strong focus on document management and trial preparation. Compared to similar legal software options like iManage or Thomson Reuters Drafting Assistant, the platform offers a more powerful set of tools for organizing and searching through legal documents . However, it also comes with some drawbacks that may make it less attractive. It lacks certain integrations with other popular legal tools, can be somewhat difficult to learn for new users, and tends to be more expensive than its competitors.
Tips for Implementing Summation Legal Software
To successfully integrate Summation Legal Software into a legal firm, there are several best practices that firms should consider. First and foremost, proper training is essential. Staff must be familiarized with the core functions of the software and how to utilize it effectively in their day-to-day tasks. Providing hands-on training sessions, along with comprehensive user manuals, can help ensure a smooth onboarding experience for all staff members.
Customizing the software to meet the specific needs of the firm is also critical. This involves setting up the software in a way that aligns with the firm’s workflows, organizing data in a meaningful manner, and integrating third-party applications that can enhance the software’s functionality. Customization not only improves productivity, but also helps with user adoption of the software.
Lastly, maintaining a feedback loop with staff and addressing any issues that arise during the software implementation process is key. Regular check-ins with the team can identify areas for improvement and ensure that the software is being used to its full potential. Keeping the lines of communication open will also aid in user adoption, as staff will feel supported by their management.
By following these best practices, implementing Summation Legal Software can be a seamless experience that boosts the team’s productivity and the firm’s overall efficiency.
Case Studies: Using Summation Legal Software Successfully
A law firm in Texas faced the daunting task of organizing and reviewing a massive volume of expert testimony from depositions for a high-stakes litigation matter. The team implemented Summation legal software to efficiently and accurately catalog all relevant information, allowing for quick referencing and citation during trial preparation. Their thorough use of the software allowed them to successfully refute the expert’s credibility on the stand, contributing to their overall victory in the case.
Another case involved a boutique corporate firm in the Northeast with multiple clients going through a merger. The merger involved a bevy of private and public documents that needed to be reviewed quickly to update the firm’s clients on potential conflicts of interest. They turned to Summation software to get through the material in 48 hours, meeting their client’s deadline and showing their commitment to the clients’ business.
In a more recent case, international collision lawyers with an office in Florida and multiple other offices spanning the Caribbean used Summation software to prepare for a quarterly meeting. The lawyer had 15 active cases on his tabletop. He scanned in the deposition pages and the data was uploaded into the Summation legal software. The lawyer then ran his software to create an instant reports for his quarterly meeting with his insurance company and litigator. The lawyer attributes the ease of client representation along with his overall legal success to the specific software he started using during his last firm invoice.
The Future of Legal Software and the Role of Summation
As we have discussed throughout this article, Summation has a number of advantages over other, newer technologies. As a firm with extensive experience in the legal software space, Summation is aware of its weaknesses as well. Down the road, we could expect to see development in some of the following areas:
One of the most exciting developments on the horizon is the potential for AI and machine learning to augment human operations. This is useful in eDiscovery because no one technology can provide a superior performance against all data types and formats. Every case is different, so every set of data will require a unique approach. Recently, Google has developed its own AI eDiscovery called Google Brain. This tool allows its users to classify entire documents by their classification. The challenge here is often a few bad documents will throw off the training set for any AI tool . That’s why Google offers manual tagging of documents within the system. For documents that might be borderline near duplicate files, or might include text that is multiple concepts in a single document, it’s particularly valuable to manually tag these to avoid manual review of them later. Unfortunately, the legal software industry is still not ready for an AI driven eDiscovery process. But that is changing. There is too much data for a small team of humans to review consistently. AI can be the solution for that. In fact, one legal AI may be able to review over 500 documents in the time it takes an average human to look at one document. AI will fundamentally change the eDiscovery process. While this is exciting, Summation will also need to keep up with this development. We will need to see if they add machine learning capabilities to their platform. If they do, that could potentially re energize their platform for many years to come.