Winston & Strawn is experiencing fast growth in its e-discovery department, according to The Washington Post. An in-house department was created specifically for e-discovery, which is sifting through emails and text messages for cases.
The group at the firm is called the e-discovery and information management practice. For three straight years, the group has recorded double-digit growth. The group recorded more than $20 million in revenue for 2013, according to John Rosenthal, who leads the group at the firm.
“From a dollar standpoint, it’s not that significant,” Rosenthal said. “But as a differentiator to our clients, it’s huge.”
E-discovery is typically farmed out by law firms to vendors, but the push to keep the work at Winston shows how much pressure there is for law firms to find new revenue sources.
The biggest concern with keeping e-discovery in-house is financial because it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to manage the date during a lawsuit.
With the group a major part of the firm, Winston has had to alter the way it hires employees. Prior to the group’s creation, Winston did not hire attorneys just to review documents. Now, the firm has about 25 to 50 document review attorneys who work in review centers inside the firm’s offices in Washington and New York.
“We’re getting hired to just do the e-discovery and work with other law firms to handle the substance,” Rosenthal said. “For us, I think the growth will continue for quite a while.”
