On July 30, I sat down with AJ Shankar, the chief executive officer of Everlaw, via WebEx. AJ and I covered a variety of topics relevant to both in-house counsel and outside counsel using eDiscovery and litigation support software, including the essence of Everlaw’s vision; creating a virtual war room that facilitates collaboration even while remaining socially distant; and the company’s pro bono program, “Everlaw for Good.”
Prior to founding Everlaw, AJ graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in Mathematics and Computer Science, and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 2009. AJ co-founded Everlaw in 2011, seeing eDiscovery as a “fascinating, rich, [and] interesting problem that needed solving.” He wrote more about his history and the founding of Everlaw in his own blog post from June 28, 2016, available here.
Company Vision and Initial Development Efforts
AJ covers Everlaw’s initial vision of providing scalability, ease of use, and simplicity to the eDiscovery process. He also notes how data volumes have grown exponentially, as has the need for faster and more scalable products.
Creative Problem Solving with Legal Technology
AJ discusses the company’s progress in executing on its vision. He also covers the ability of the platform to improve collaboration and communication given that the law is “inherently collaborative.”
Breaking Boundaries in the Traditional War Room
AJ talks about Everlaw’s “Storybuilder” options and its suite of tools designed for trial preparation collaboration. He also discusses how the company ensures that these tools are “purpose built for law” and can be leveraged in a variety of ways.
Everlaw for Good
AJ explains the mission behind Everlaw is to “support justice by illuminating truth.” “Everlaw for Good” was created to facilitate use of the tool to increase access to justice in a variety of settings that involve review of data.
AJ described Everlaw as “a cloud-based, eDiscovery and litigation platform.” Founded over nine years ago, Everlaw handles everything within the eDiscovery lifecycle, from processing all the way through the discovery process to production. It also includes features that support the “story telling aspect of litigation.”
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at csanko@bakerdonelson.com. I would love to hear from you.
LeanDiscovery: Sitting with the C-Suite is a series of interviews designed to provide in-house legal counsel with a birds-eye view of the eDiscovery marketplace, particularly its various technology and service providers. A key component of great eDiscovery management and execution is having a great supply chain. Sitting with the C-Suite is a forum to hear directly from the C-Suite of various eDiscovery providers about the marketplace history, current and future service offerings, and expectations of things to come. This is not an advertisement or endorsement of any of the speakers, or the companies, services and technology that they represent, by either the interviewer or Baker Donelson. The views expressed are those of the speaker. Baker Donelson’s eDiscovery team seeks to provide the best client value throughout the eDiscovery life cycle. If you have any companies or speakers that you would like to see featured, please feel free to reach out to us at LeanDiscovery@bakerdonelson.com.
