“It’s easy to use” – said every ediscovery software company ever.
If you have ever walked around a legal conference, I am sure you have been inundated with the phrase ‘it’s easy to use’ followed by a wink and the words ‘trust me.’ So what makes an ediscovery software easy to use?
DISCO thinks easy to use means that anyone, with no instruction, can log into our SaaS-based ediscovery solution and execute 14 common tasks required in a typical review. And not only execute those 14 common tasks but to do so while under the stress of a group of people watching and being timed.
So, during Legaltech, we decided to put our money where our mouth is and literally offer $2,100 CASH to the person who could complete these steps in the least amount of time...
What is the DISCO Challenge?
To be fully impressed, first you need to know what the 14 common tasks comprising the DISCO Challenge were.
Using the standard Enron database, particpants had to complete the following:
- Search for the terms: ken lay agreement
- Open the first document and ensure the hot and responsive tags are applied
- Redact a portion of the document with the reason: “Confidential”
- Save your redactions and close the document
- Click on the year with the highest document activity, then apply it to your search
- Close out of Search Visualization and return to the list of documents
- Filter down to Excel documents using Search Filters
- Sort the documents by the specific tag prediction for Broadband
- Open any document and share it with Etheridge@csdisco.com via “In-app”
- Close out of the document
- Open your productions and locate the production named “ENRONPRODUCTION1”
- View the list of produced documents
- Open a document and view its produced version
- Stop
The rules were simple: players could take the challenge as many times as they wanted to during Legaltech convention hours, as long as there was a one hour break between plays. More than 60 players took us up on our challenge, with hundreds of plays occurring over the three-day event.
So, why were we willing to put our money on the line to demonstrate how easy it is to use DISCO, regardless of a user's background, education, or skill set? It's simple:
- DISCO combines world-class engineering and legal expertise to design market-leading software
- DISCO offers a clean, seamless, and intuitive user interface with customizable workflows and views to give users immediate control over their data
- DISCO provides the fastest and most accurate performance in the industry with 1/10-second search results and 1/3-second document viewing, regardless of database size or complex file types
It's pretty obvious that DISCO has accomplished these three goals and more, taking into account the result of the challenge – that ease of use is attainable with a well-designed ediscovery solution.
How did our group of challengers fare?
We saw timed scores range from four minutes (which is impressive in its own right) to 41 seconds (which is superhero status in my book). At the end of day one, our leaderboard showed Brie Leviton, a Litigation Support Specialist, in the lead by 18 seconds.
First Place: Brie Leviton 1:38.33
Second Place: Alex Valentin 1:56.65
Third Place: Robert Simmons 2:19.49
At the end of day two, incumbent Brie was able to maintain her lead by a narrow 66 milliseconds over Jovi Federici, an Ediscovery Consultant.
First Place: Brie Leviton 1:09.00
Second Place: Jovi Federici 1:09.66
Third Place: Erin Tomine 1:14.78
What was surprising about day two was that players started figuring out on their own time-saving tricks, shaving crucial seconds off their overall scores – things like figuring out shortcut keys and finding ways to skip steps to achieve the same goal required. Some participants even showed up with their favorite mouse to help their reaction times.
On day three, newcomer Alison Karner, a Discovery Services Analyst, took the lead and won the entire DISCO Challenge with a score of 41.9 seconds!
Are you interested in seeing how you would do taking the DISCO Challenge?
All you need is access to DISCO (we can arrange that), a stopwatch, and a crowd around your desk to cheer you on.
But I think the true ease of use challenge would be to try these 14 common tasks in the ediscovery solution you use on a daily basis and see how much time it takes to complete them (if you can). Can you beat our slowest score of 4.4 minutes, or be faster than our best score 41.9 seconds? Get in touch with us and share your results! We are interested to hear them!
