Clients have become more and more less tolerant of their cost of litigation.  Profits are being squeezed from all sides.  CT Summation can help you contain and control some of those costs, making you more profitable, nimble and attractive to the market.

On the right, there is an example Return on Investment ROI on utilizing digital technologies with Summation vs. the traditional manual methods.  This scenario shows a savings of over $35,000 vs. the manual methods.  This more than covers an estimated Summation investment of less than $11,000.  Following is an explanation of the ROI.

Assumptions
We wanted to show a relatively small litigation case with 20 boxes of documents.  Summation is able to handle both much smaller and larger cases, but we thought 20 boxes is representative.  Each box can hold an average of 2,500 pages, for a total 50,000 pages.  Since many tasks are repeated throughout a case's life, and that life can be weeks, months or years, we chose a life of 24 weeks, which may be a little conservative.

Manual Process
The first thing many firms do at the beginning of a case is to have multiple copies, as many as 5 or 6, made of all the documents they have.  Other simple features, such as Bates Labeling, adds a few cents per page.  For the purposes of this exercise, being conservative, we said 3 copies. 

File Maintenance is merely keeping track of the documents in the case, which means a lot of filing and re-filing.  This results in some lost and/or misplaced documents; maybe not a lot of them, but some that could be critical.   

There is also a cost associated with searching and retrieving documents because it still takes paralegal and clerical time and must be accounted for.

Digital Process
Typically, you will still have the same photocopying costs because you want to protect the originals; however, you'd only need one copy.  Instead of more copies, you would have the documents scanned; this will save money in that any time you needed hard copies, you just print out what you need, not sending out for more copies.  Or you can burn the images to CD and send out your documents that way.

At the same time, you would want those images OCR'd (Optical Character Recognition); this will give you a file so that you can search the document's text.

Of course, you must still search and retrieve documents, but the search time is much less, and much more accurate.

Conclusion
The traditional, manual method of copying paper documents and searching for them by hand is a more time-consuming and costly method.  And you run the risk missing important documents.  The digital method is much more accurate, faster and, ultimately, can pay for itself in a short period of time.  

We would be happy to review your particular situation and show you how Summation can help you succeed, both financially and in winning cases.

  Which Summation Product is Best for You?

  Using Summation Throughout the Life of Your Case

The cost of litigation continues to rise.  Clients are more sophisticated than ever in controlling their litigation expenditures.  Your profit margins are continuously squeezed.  CT Summation is but one tool that can help you control your costs, improving your productivity and profitability.  It can help you market your firm as one that strives to control costs for your clients, without diminishing your profits.

Following is a cost scenario that shows how utilizing scanning technologies and Summation vs. the typical manual process can pay for itself in very short order.  Your results may be different depending on your specific situation; however, these should be representative.  If you would like us to send you a spreadsheet where you can insert your own costs and criteria, please email us.  This is not a guarantee of savings, but an additional tool to help in your decision-making.

 

Summation Return on Investment (ROI)

Manual Process Analysis  
Digital Process Analysis    
Estimated Summation Investment  
   

Assumptions:  Estimated Pages
Number of boxes	20
Number of pages/box	2,500
Estimated Total Pages	50,000
Estimated life of case (in weeks)	24

Manual Process

Photocopy/Bates Labeling/Re-Copy

Photocopy Originals	$0.15/page	$7,500
Apply Bate Labels	$0.05/page	2,500
Photocopy Numbered Set	$0.10/page	5,000
Manually Index Bates Numbers	$0.10/page	5,000
Sub-Total	.	$20,000
Copies Made	.	x3
Photocopy Total	.	$60,000

File Maintenance

Number of Employees	1	.
Hours/Week Processing Documents (per employee)	10	.
Hourly Rate of Paralegal	$30	.
Labor Costs	(weekly)	$300

Lost or Mis-Filed Documents (weekly)

Percentage Lost or Mis-filed	0.06%	.
Estimated Pages	50,000	.
Estimated Pages Lost/Mis-filed	30	.
Average Time Spent Retrieving or Replacing Misplaced Docs	40 min.	..
Hourly Rate of Paralegal	$30	.
Lost Document Costs	(weekly)	$600

Costs to Search and Retrieve Documents (weekly)

Time Spent Searching for Documents, then Manually Retrieving, Photocopying and Reinserting Original Paper Documents	30 min.	.
Typical Number of Searches/Week	10	.
Hourly Rate of Paralegal	$30	.
Document Searching Costs	(weekly).	$150

Manual Document Costs for Life of Case:   $71,400

Digital Process

Photocopy/Bates Labeling/Re-Copy

Photocopy Originals	$0.15/page	$7,500
Apply Bate Labels	$0.05/page	2,500
Photocopy Numbered Set	$0.10/page	5,000
Manually Index Bates Numbers	$0.10/page	5,000
Sub-Total	.	$20,000
Copies Made	.	x1
Photocopy Total	.	$20,000

Third-Party Imaging Costs
Scanning, Number Images, Index Bates #'s, OCR

Estimated Pages	50,000	.
Price per Page	$0.31	.
Total Scanning Cost	.	$15,500

Costs to Search and Retrieve Documents (weekly)

Time Spent Doing One Electronic Search and Printing Electronic Images	5 min.	.
Typical Number of Searches/Week	10	.
Hourly Rate of Paralegal	$30	.
Document Searching Costs	(weekly).	$25

Digital Document Costs for Life of Case:   $36,100

Savings Digital vs. Manual           $35,300

% of Savings per Case (exclusive of investment)    49%

Example Summation Investment	.
3-Node iBlaze, Purchase	$  5,295
First Year's Maintenance	621
Single-User iBlaze, Purchase	2,495
First Year's Maintenance	429
1.5 Days of Training from CUW LitSupport	1,875
Example Summation Investment	$ 10,715

  let us help you decide which Summation Solution is best for you