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5 Ways to Streamline Collaboration for Widespread Teams

Megan Twibell

At a time when everyone is looking to simplify their work, reduce the number of tools they’re using to do their jobs, and find ways to easily collaborate with widespread case teams, it’s a good opportunity to evaluate whether your case strategy practices are amenable to those goals.

If you’re finding your processes scattered and communications decentralized, it’s possible to make big improvements—without incurring any additional costs.

Case Dynamics and Transcripts are available to Relativity customers for free. They are fully integrated into the platform to allow case teams to work together seamlessly as a case moves from preliminary stages all the way to trial preparation.

When important discussions need to be had within the team or when information needs to be shared across various levels, these tools allow you to perform collaborative tasks within Relativity—without sending extra emails, using other tools, or creating more work. You can quickly use features like designations, notes, comments, reports, custom fields, and outlines to make decisions and create evergreen artifacts so that everyone on your team has a unified understanding of the latest developments.

Let's take a closer look at some common scenarios where these features can be used to build shared knowledge of each case.

Scenario #1: Use designations within Transcripts to draw attention to areas of a transcript which need comment by specific attorneys.

Traditionally speaking, the designations annotation tool is used to call out specific areas of a transcript to be used in trial. Alternatively, designations can be used to call out content in a transcript for another reviewer by adding their name as the designation value. This way, they can easily filter for these specific areas while they’re within Relativity, and then use the notes and comments sections to share key insights and invite case team members into a dialogue about the subject matter.

 

Scenario #2: With the right reporting, working in separate streams doesn’t have to mean working alone.

It’s not uncommon for more senior case team members to spend their time reviewing key documents outside of the Relativity environment. To support that workflow request while maintaining a big picture view on how data interacts, case teams are adding their questions to the Interview question object and then associating documents with those questions. Then, they can export single PDFs which contain the questions (and possible answers) with supporting document images and work product. Sending these focused reports to partners helps case teams get to the answers they need faster.

Scenario #3: Using entities gives your case team more information, right where they need it.

We learn a lot about people and organizations as cases develop, but where is this information stored and how is it used? The entity object functions as the central location for people, companies, organizational groups, and their metadata. Relativity Case Dynamics, Legal Hold, Processing, and Analytics all leverage these entities to help you connect and understand data. Case teams can add new fields to the entity object for reporting and analysis, and easily access this data when working with documents.

As an example, if you are tracking patient demographics, add those data points to the entity object and share it with a custom view on your coding layout. This will give a more robust review experience to the case team, and where appropriate, case teams can continue to build out entity information from the document viewer.

 

Scenario #4: Use outlines for documenting review decisions.

A central challenge of any review project is quality control—because, even when just one reviewer is on the case, it’s almost impossible to ensure every coding call is consistent with the last.

With Case Dynamics, contract reviewers and outside counsel can continuously refer to a Review Protocol Outline for a refresher on key information, which may include a list of the relevant people and organizations, designated time period, agreed upon key terms, case issues, and a summary of facts. Additionally, representative documents can be linked directly to the outline to train reviewers and deflect commonly asked questions.

 

Final Suggestion: Get Creative

The above scenarios are some of the most popular ways that Case Dynamics and Transcripts can help case teams collaborate effectively and efficiently within a single platform, regardless of where they may be physically located.

But teams across our community are always finding unique ways to collaborate with these products, and we hope that these examples spark some ideas for you on how to do the same. You are the experts on what workflows best meet the needs of your team—but we’re here to help, too. Feel free to contact us any time; we’d be happy to share tips, brainstorm ideas, and walk you through the workflows that are ready and waiting for you in Relativity.

Editor’s Note: Cherry Mangat, a senior product manager at Relativity, also contributed to writing this piece.

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Megan Twibell is a solution specialist at Relativity, helping users be as effective and efficient with the platform as possible.

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