A traditional “war room” is used by the military to plan for battle. A legal “war room” is used by a litigation team to plan for trial. Digital WarRoom® is a software platform for anyone that needs to plan a comprehensive attack on the processing, review, and production of electronically stored information (ESI).
Digital WarRoom® offers solutions for any size matter, but most notably, the company offers a desktop software option with Digital WarRoom® Pro that allows law firms to DIY their document processing, document filtering, review tagging, privilege log management, creating productions, deposition preparation, etc.
There are two main offerings of Digital WarRoom for your eDiscovery needs:
- First there is the Digital WarRoom® Pro software which is a single license installation for a desktop computer. There are not many desktop software options available in the eDiscovery market today, but Digital WarRoom® continues to fill that gap for those firms that need a desktop solution.
- Second, Digital WarRoom® manages their own extensive Private Cloud infrastructure that will support either a month-to-month subscription when a firm has a few dozen GBs worth of data, or the Private Cloud that can be deployed as a firm-wide solution to host hundreds of GBs of data with unlimited users and unlimited databases.
If you’re familiar with Microsoft Outlook’s interface, and you’re halfway acquainted with sorting columns in Microsoft Excel, you will have no problem in navigating the interface of Digital WarRoom® Pro.
Desktop Software
Digital WarRoom® has always offered a cloud-based hosting environment, but the company decided to offer an introductory-level product for a group of customers they found still needed the power of Digital WarRoom, but only had one or two cases where they could use the software. That’s why they developed Digital WarRoom® Pro, although customers can certainly transfer cases to the hosted environment if they should ever outgrow the desktop software.
If you’re familiar with Microsoft Outlook’s interface, and you’re halfway acquainted with sorting columns in Microsoft Excel, you will have no problem in navigating the interface of Digital WarRoom® Pro.
The only caveat with the desktop software is that you’ll need to supply some of the other utilities and software tools to ensure you can use all the features of Digital WarRoom® Pro. This is one of the ways the company keeps the costs low (the annual license costs $1,795), but the requirements not steep and the company includes an hour of free setup and training.
The Digital WarRoom® Pro installation requires Microsoft SQL Express (a free download), and the computer will need a copy of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer (which is not a problem for any office running Windows computers). Beyond that, there are just a handful of free downloads you’ll need for image viewing and PDF conversions. Again, Digital WarRoom will work with you directly to get it all set up.
Uploading & Processing
Getting data into Digital WarRoom is as simple as dragging and dropping, so when a client sends you a PST file, you can drag it directly into your instance of Digital WarRoom Pro. Just be aware that the data processing stage will take time and potentially strain your computer’s resources. The data indexing and OCR functions are very processor intensive and not designed to run on a consumer class desktop computer. That’s why so many service providers (including Digital WarRoom) manage large server installations, which can more quickly churn through the data processing stage. But if you choose to proceed on your own, just know that your computer will bog down during this phase.
Next, Digital WarRoom allows you to apply a “Policy” to your data before shifting it over to the Review side. The Policy wizard walks you through each step. For example, if you have data from five custodians, but only want to start reviewing the most important individual, just set your Policy appropriately. Plus you can further narrow down your data by keywords, date ranges, file types, and variety of other options. You can always go back and pull more files over to Review when you’re ready. Unfortunately, many firms just yank everything over to Review without applying a Policy, which means they waste a lot of time getting overwhelmed with junk they don’t need to be looking at.
Digital WarRoom allows users to set up an unlimited number of “Binders” where they can organize documents. Just be sure to add a note when you set up a Binder to explain what the Binder contains so that it can be referenced later.
Browse & Review
Once you pull over your selected data into the Review side, you’ll see a nicely formatted panel on the left that allows you to filter out specific pieces and parts of your data. For example, you can elect to only look at specific data from custodians, or a specific file type, etc. On the right side you’ll see your list of documents which you can customize by adding or removing specific columns of information.
Documents in the list that have no coding applied (no decision made on them) are show in bold, while coded documents are non-bolded. This is helpful visual cue and similar to how read and un-read messages appear in Microsoft Outlook.
Digital WarRoom provides a simple yet effective document viewer where you can choose to see the native file, or a rendered image of the file. Anytime someone looks at a document, applies coding, or adds an annotation, Digital WarRoom tracks those actions. This is helpful for teams to double-check their work.
Digital WarRoom allows users to set up an unlimited number of “Binders” where they can organize documents. Many users take advantage of this for things like “Hot Documents” or even simply “John’s Favorite Documents” – you can use anything the will help the litigation team better organize the documents as you read through them. Just be sure to add a note when you set up a Binder to explain what the Binder contains so that it can be referenced later. You can even use a Binder to collect documents that need to be exported or produced.
Exports & Productions
Finally, Digital WarRoom® Pro offers a seamless workflow for creating production sets that anyone can accomplish as long as you follow the steps provided in the Production wizard.
The first step is to find the collection of documents that you intend to use for the production set, and then Digital WarRoom will group them into a “draft” production set. Next, you’ll walk through each step in the wizard as you choose the production format (PDF, TIFF, etc.), apply Bates numbers, or any other necessary endorsements.
Fairly new to Digital WarRoom® Pro is the ability to embed a watermark on the documents to be produced. Instead of having an “confidential” stamp at the bottom of each page, this could be applied as a watermark.
While Digital WarRoom® offers a multitude of service levels for firms and matters of all sizes, the Digital WarRoom® Pro software is one of the few desktop solutions still available on the market. If your firm has a specific rationale for using a desktop solution, then Digital WarRoom® is an excellent option.
Conclusion
While Digital WarRoom® offers a multitude of service levels for firms and matters of all sizes, the Digital WarRoom® Pro software is one of the few desktop solutions still available on the market. If your firm has a specific rationale for using a desktop solution, then Digital WarRoom® is an excellent option.
Who is Digital WarRoom?
In 2000, brothers Dan and Bill Gallivan were employees at the Seattle law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis when the firm had to review a warehouse full of documents as part of the federal government antitrust investigation of Microsoft. The Gallivans succeeded in utilizing technology to help the firm in this monumental task, and then launched Digital WarRoom in 2010 as a hosted service and a standalone software.
Why Should You Consider Digital WarRoom Pro?
- One of the only functional and modern-day desktop software solutions available in the eDiscovery market backed buy Digital WarRoom’s hosted options should you outgrow the desktop software.
- Valuable “Who to Whom” visual component showing who was sending emails to specific individuals.
- The “Work Product Palette” can be completely customized with the applicable tags and coding that reviewers can apply to the documents.
- Distinct “Filter Tree” for quickly selecting documents based on file types, custodians, Binders, and more.
Try Out Digital WarRoom For Yourself!
Please enjoy a 45 day free trial of Digital WarRoom, a secure, affordable do-it-yourself application where you can manage the full spectrum of eDiscovery. Readers of the eDiscovery Buyers guide are further invited to a special discount when you are ready to make your first step on the eDiscovery journey with us.
