Epiq is a full service alternative legal services provider (ALSP) that offers extensive services to both corporate legal departments and law firms. Though some will be most familiar with Epiq’s work in eDiscovery, including its flagship product Epiq Discovery, the ALSP has expanded to include a deep breadth of services to accommodate needs across litigation, contracting, commercial, compliance and regulatory, data visualization and more.
Epiq Access is a client portal providing Epiq clients with a unique way of interacting with Epiq Services. Epiq Service Cloud is the underlying platform to which Epiq Access acts as a “front door”, enabling features that support digital transformation on both the Epiq and the client side.
Legaltech Hub spoke with executives at Epiq to learn more about the Epiq Access offering. A product demo video showcasing Epiq Service Cloud and Epiq Access is located at the end of this article.
Background
Shah Karim is the CTO of the Legal Solutions Business at Epiq, responsible for software development of first party applications and internal R&D. Felicia Anderson is the Vice President of Product Management at Epiq and runs the teams that build software products
Epiq is one of the largest global ALSPs, providing a combination of people, process and technology to corporate legal departments and law firms. With the addition of two strategic businesses, Hyperion Research (offering legal operations and transformation services for law firms and legal departments), and Fireman & Company (providing knowledge management implementation services for law firms). Epiq provides data-focused services for information decision making.
Two years ago, the Epiq Legal Solutions team started building a cloud native, modern architecture-based platform on which both first party and third party apps could be hosted along with data and data analytics, allowing customers to do things that would otherwise not be possible – such as zero downtime deployments and high speed data processing.
What Problem does Epiq Service Cloud Solve, and for Whom?
Like other ALSPs, Epiq runs a variety of software solutions on behalf of its clients, including both first party and third party applications such as Relativity and Nuix. Running all of those applications bespoke without sharing too much infrastructure with clients is onerous, both from a process perspective and from a cost and efficiency perspective. Doing so on an individual client basis prevents Epiq from being able to leverage any scale across its operations. Running all of those applications together without sharing data across customer instances becomes challenging from a technology, resourcing, cost and efficiency perspective.
The Epiq Service Cloud journey was conceived of as a way to create a platform on which data and outcome-based solutions could natively reside, allowing Epiq run and scale best-of-breed technologies in a way that has become second nature for software companies but has lagged behind for legal.
The Epiq Service Cloud, for example, is able to facilitate the processing 30 terabytes of data from a law firm in one weekend so that they are up and running for document review on a Monday morning. This would be out of reach for most firms, especially smaller or mid-sized firms, but Epiq is able to process data rapidly on behalf of clients through the Service Cloud, allowing them to operate faster and become nimble in the way they leverage Epiq services. Essentially, the Epiq Service Cloud support digital transformation – both of the way that Epiq serves its clients, and of the way that the clients themselves do their work.
How does it work?
The combination of Epiq Access and the Epiq Service Cloud provides a repeatable, consistent way of accessing Epiq Services.
Epiq Service Cloud provides a platform to which Epiq Access is the front door, serving as a client portal from which customers of Epiq can self-serve information about their work with Epiq, including work in progress and financial information, and through which they are able to access software they use for various purposes.
The Epiq Service cloud is made up of a data layer, and infrastructure layer, Epiq proprietary applications as well as third party applications, and a layer of analytics.
The data that clients upload into Epiq Services Cloud is varied, from discovery data through to the financial data provided by the client. The client’s data that lands with Epiq sits on the Service Cloud, enabling Epiq to run data analytics over it. The data platform at the heart of Epiq Service cloud hosts customer data and allows Epiq to run machine learning models over it as well as analytics in order to produce insights for clients.
On top of that data layer sit applications like Epiq Discovery, Relativity, Nuix, which can run seamlessly on a single platform. The final layer is Epiq Access, which is a single place for the client to log in and see all of their services that they’ve subscribed to with Epiq, all under one roof. The client experience occurs at the point of Epiq Access, like a “front door” to their own Epiq services.
Clients can access whichever Epiq services they subscribe to, and their instances of Epiq applications and third party applications run on their behalf by Epiq, through the Epiq Service Cloud. Essentially, it provides them with a one-stop shop from which to access both services from Epiq and information about their engagements with Epiq.
The Epiq Service Cloud has great infrastructure flexibility, and is able to deployed in a public cloud, the client’s private cloud, or on prem on the client side. Epiq Access provides single sign on so that clients can log in once and get access to all of their tools.
What are the Use Cases for Epiq Service Cloud?
Any services offered by Epiq are able to be accessed through the Epiq Service Cloud.
The Epiq services are vast, and vary from the corporate, legal operations side to the law firm side. It is common for clients to start using Epiq for traditional discovery services and then, once they have come on board as a client, to expand their footprint with Epiq and start using them as well for services such as contract analysis and spend management.
The Legal Services Frameworks set out below provide a summary of the services offered by Epiq.
In addition to eDiscovery, some of the services most often leveraged by corporate legal departments through the Epiq Service Cloud include spend management, reporting, data visualization dashboards, and legal operations optimization.
For law firms, the Epiq Service Cloud is useful for contract services including contract analytics, regulatory and compliance work such as anti-trust, global investigations, and regulatory risk, as well as cyber incidents and notifications.
Who is the Target Demographic?
Epiq Service Cloud and Epiq Access is for the benefit of Epiq clients. It is an exclusive advantage that Epiq customers have access to, enabling them to operate with their ALSP digitally and become more nimble in their use of data and third party services.
What Makes Epiq Service Cloud Unique?
The Epiq Service Cloud differentiates Epiq from other ALSPs that provide similar types of services.
It provides Epiq clients with the convenience of being able to access all of the services that they want from an ALSP provider in one place, helping to ensure that they will continue to use Epiq for additional services instead of going elsewhere. Clients using the Epiq Service Cloud are able to get their work completed faster, and achieve better visibility on where their work stands. They are also able to obtain transparency, not just on their spend data with Epiq, but also on their outside spend data.
Because of the flexibility in the way that the Epiq Service Cloud can be deployed, and the fact that it bring together both first and third party applications, clients using Epiq Service Cloud and Epiq Access are able to deploy software with one click, leveraging best-of-breed technologies in a way that has become second nature for software companies but has simply not been available in the legal industry.
