Have you ever heard of the terms E-Filing, E-Service or E-Discovery? If not, here is a quick crash course on what they mean and the impact they have in the evolving practice of litigation. The “E” represents Electronic, and the subsequent word is exactly what it describes. With the use of the internet and cloud based services, attorneys are now able to practice from almost anywhere in the world.

Besides having to occasionally appear in court, most attorneys can litigate remotely with the use of electronic tools. The olden days of producing physical documents is becoming obsolete. Attorneys can streamline litigation via E-Filings, E-Service & E-Discovery. There is no need to print and prepare physical documents to be filed or served any longer. Legal practitioners can simply upload various documents to be filed and served instantaneously. The stressful task of serving voluminous documents to multiple parties before the end of the day can be resolved with a few clicks of a button. Not only does this save a significant amount of time, but it saves a tremendous amount of cost. Additionally, the documents can be securely accessed 24/7 through the online repository.

As for the discovery phase in litigation, E-Discovery is a bit more complex in terms of its use. The process of discovery still remains the same, but the way in which evidence is produced and reviewed has drastically changed through electronic means. Imagine an entire storage room full of documents needing to be reviewed, this would usually take tremendous amounts of resources and time to review all of them. However, with the use of E-Discovery, documents can be scanned and reviewed through an electronic tool that can search and decipher certain keywords or phrases. There is still some leg work that needs to be done, but once the documents have been digitized, the electronic tools will do the rest. Attorneys can now examine massive amounts of documents without having to physically sift through each one.

Litigation in the digital age is completely different from what it used to be a decade ago. To think that attorneys had to manually handle these tasks is a difficult thought. It doesn’t matter the size of the firm, any litigation firm can take advantage of these time and money saving tools. When handling  a new case, make sure to do your due diligence and find the right litigation support provider to help you with your filing, serving and discovery needs. It will surely make a world of difference.

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