Clients demand the highest quality work, combined with the lowest possible cost. “Efficiency” is the buzzword always used to try to drive higher productivity from a fixed cost base. But at the end of the day, there is only a physical number of hours a fee-earner can work in any week, and so a maximum theoretical income per person, no matter how efficient there are.

Even if you can make fee-earners work non-stop, and even if they can bill every hour, you still face the wall of client expectation. You can only bill so much for a particular piece of work.

The area that clients often get hot under the collar about is Discovery. Bill Cannings, Chairman of Chase ITS, invented e-discovery with R/KYV in 1989. Over the years, the tools available to litigators have become increasingly sophisticated (and expensive).

One area that remains untouched is how you process large volumes of telephone calls without having them retyped at great expense. JUMPTO helps in that process. First, it passes the calls through the VOX BOX to obtain the indexable text. Then using CITE (CALM Intelligent Theme Engine), it combines the voice data with other discovery documents to present a top-down view of what is contained in the discovery material. This information can then be segmented by time, channel (eg e-mail or voice), or person, to allow a complete drill down into the disclosed material.

Discovery becomes more efficient still, and litigators can offer a client more for less.