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Everlaw does everything I need as a solo practitioner. I believe it would do everything a larger firm needs as well.
June 28, 2021

Everlaw does everything I need as a solo practitioner. I believe it would do everything a larger firm needs as well.

David Sifre | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Storybuilder
  • Document Review Platform

Overall Satisfaction with Everlaw

I am a solo practitioner who uses Everlaw to manage my document productions and document reviews, and I use it to assist in the preparation of exhibits for briers and depositions.
  • It is extremely fast rendering documents. There has never been a time where I clicked "next document" and felt like I was wasting time waiting for the document to load.
  • Customer service is excellent. Sometimes you receive a document production and it isn't "quite right." Customer services is quick to let you know what the problems are and exactly what you need to request your adversary to do to fix the problem. If you ever get "lost" on how to do something, they are very good at helping you out.
  • I usually get a response same business day, though sometimes it takes until the next business day if they need to research an issue.
  • It is intuitive to use the basics while offering granular control for more advanced uses. As a document reviewer you want to be able to easily highlight, tag and sort your documents. Everlaw makes this very easy to do.
  • Not everything is as I would like it to be. For example, while it is easy to copy work product (highlights, issue tags, comments) from one project to another, for some reason they don't allow you to copy "storybuilder" objects. It would be nice if they allowed this. What this means is if you have the same set of documents in two projects, you can carry over the issue tags, highlighting, etc., if you want. But, if you created a deposition outline in "Storybuilder" in Project A, you can't copy that deposition (with exhibits) over to Project B.
  • The Storybuilder "outline" function is not easy to use and does not export well to word. That said, once you get the hang of it, it really works beautifully for organizing exhibits.
  • I need a platform that lets me find the documents I want quickly and easily. Everlaw lets me do this.
  • I love that you can just "duplicate" a browser tab and open up as many documents as you please, and even work on multiple stories. It helps to have at least two monitors, but the more the merrier.
  • It is important that the work product is always saved. I've never had a "glitch" where I lost work.
  • It is easy to allow clients or employees to have access to any set of documents, and you can have "discussions" with them over the platform. You can see what your they are reviewing and see what they are tagging. I like to be able to search for those documents marked as hot by a particular reviewer.
  • Unfortunately, I do not have any hard numbers to share. The platform costs what it costs and you either eat that cost or pass it on to the client. The platform certainly makes you a more efficient attorney and saves a lot of time, so even if the monthly fee is kind of high, the client gets a lot of value out of it.
When I worked at a large law firm and used Relativity, I found that it was rather difficult to use. It absolutely required an IT staff to run and it was great to be able to e-mail litigation support to help accomplish what needed accomplishing. But, Relativity is really a terrible platform when compared to Everlaw. At least from the user's perspective. I don't remember being able to manage the documents nearly so easily or intuitively as I can with Everlaw. I love being able to create binders, stories, easily conduct searches, eliminate duplicates, et cetera.

Do you think Everlaw delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Everlaw's feature set?

Yes

Did Everlaw live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Everlaw go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Everlaw again?

Yes

I think Everlaw is very well suited for any project where you want to organize your documents, produce documents or review documents produced to you. It's "word processing" features are pretty awful and that makes the Storybuilder functionality less useful. The best workflow for me is as follows: On Screen 1 you have Everlaw browser open. You tag those documents you may use in your story, they show up on the right panel. Then, you open up your word processor on Screen 2 and get writing. If you need to refer to an exhibit in your word processed document, use the #idenitication number from Screen 1 and type it in your document. If you want to review the document, you click the "eye" icon in the right panel on Screen 1 and read it as you are doing your typing on Screen 2. When done with the document, you cut and paste it into the Everlaw Storybuilder "body". You may have to manually search for the #'s to have the documents tagged in your story - You need to have them tagged in the story body so that when you click on "exhibits" you can export all of the exhibits referenced if that is something you want to have done (for example, to upload for e-filing).