Litigation Support Services With No Excuses
Published in “The Liaison” (a publication of the Smoky Mountain Paralegal Association), July 2010.:
Document Solutions Inc.
Litigation Support Services With No Excuses
Document Solutions, Inc. (DSi) is a litigation support services company that helps law firms and corporate law departments make the most efficient use of attorneys’ time by finding, copying and organizing the enormous amount of data that is often pertinent to a major legal case. The result is that attorneys spend less time sorting through irrelevant data and more time building their case – which means lower legal bills and faster litigation resolution.
DSi employs a wide range of traditional and technology-driven services in carrying out its mission, including Electronic Discovery, Digital Forensics, Data Recovery, De-Duplication of both digital and paper files, Copying, Photocopying, Printing, Trial Boards, Document Management, Document Scanning, Imaging, Optical Character Recognition and more.
Tennessee’s recognized leader in litigation support services, DSi operates from offices in Nashville and Knoxville and counts the state’s largest law firms among its clients. Its reach also extends beyond Tennessee to serving over 155 domestic and international markets and many Fortune 100 corporations.
Partners Tom Turner and Kevin Tyner founded DSi in Nashville in 1999 as a bulk photocopy firm serving the legal community. Tom had five years of experience working for a similar firm in Atlanta. Kevin was a forensic accountant with a small public accounting firm. The two men’s skills and personalities were a perfect match – as was their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to meet a client’s needs. This intensive focus on customer service has continued to set DSi apart in the litigation support field.
“We take the opposite of the Wal-Mart approach – we’re not the cheapest or the biggest, nor do we ever want to be,” Tom said. “We simply want to be the first firm you think of when you want the job done right for a fair price. Clients come to us for results, not excuses.”
In August of 2007, DSi opened its Knoxville office and Jeff Stoneking and Gary Torgersen became partners in the firm.
“Beyond their work in setting up Knoxville, Jeff and Gary are both key members of the DSi team,” Kevin said. “Jeff’s e-discovery sales experience and Gary’s deep technical knowledge have been essential to the firm’s success.”
Early on in the firm’s history, it became obvious that paper documents were becoming outmoded. As a result, DSi become one of the first firms in the country to do e-discovery work – beginning in 2001, just two years after the company’s founding and five years before e-discovery was mandated by amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
“You could say that our strong commitment to doing ‘whatever it takes’ to meet our clients’ needs is what put us ahead of the curve in e-discovery, because our entry into the field was prompted by a request by one of our large corporate clients, which has a very forward-thinking legal department. These attorneys saw how important that e-mails and other digital files would be to building a strong case. This early request put us on the cutting edge of legal technology, and it’s where we have remained,” Kevin said.
DSi’s “no excuses” approach is particularly evident in its e-discovery work. Recently, for example, to meet a client’s court-imposed deadline, DSi processed over 1.3 million pages of digital documents in 72 hours – a remarkable feat by any standard.
DSi’s commitment to putting the latest technology to work for its clients has led the company to develop its own proprietary software to improve on what is currently available. Three programs are currently in development, with the first slated for beta testing this summer.
“E-discovery work has grown from one percent of our business in 2000 to 60 percent of it today, and it frequently must be done quickly,” Tom said. “But, of course, paper is still very prevalent in business and law today, so we also have technology to de-duplicate, sort and analyze paper documents in much the same way we can with electronic data.”
DSi’s imaging department has scanned millions of documents within the highest standards of quality and timeliness. Imaging technicians prep and scan client documents, inspect each image for clarity and accuracy and reassemble the documents in the same order they were received. Every image is checked against the original in the quality control process and the data is then packaged into any format desired. If needed, DSi can also have a certified trainer load the media onto the client’s computer.
Photocopying remains an important part of DSi’s business. The firm has a state-of-the-art facility to manage and complete the largest photocopy projects while maintaining the strictest level of security and confidentiality – and timeliness. Most projects can be completed overnight, seven days a week. All copies are checked page-for-page against the originals to ensure accuracy. In addition to standard photocopying – both black-and- white and color – and binding of documents in any standard format, DSi can copy oversize documents, such as maps and surveys, and mount them on foamcore for use as courtroom exhibits. It can even copy x-rays and duplicate audio-visual media, such as videotapes, DVDs, tapes and CDs.
The firm’s digital forensics capabilities are used by law enforcement and the legal community to find evidence of crimes. DSi’s expert digital forensic technicians are trained in the techniques and procedures needed to preserve the integrity of captured data. Using solid methods for chain of custody and storage, the digital forensics team provides a documented path for the evidence handled. Digital forensic services provided by DSi include: searching for proprietary information, showing search history, revealing browsing history, discovering metadata (date created, accessed, modified, etc…), restoring backup tapes, cracking password-protected files and performing a detailed data analysis.
From cutting edge work in digital forensics and e-disovery to extremely rapid imaging and photocopying within the highest quality standards, DSi’s goal remains the same: to make it easier for the attorneys to provide their clients with timely, fully informed and well-prepared legal counsel.
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