Beyond Technology: Why Client Services Matters in Modern Litigation Support 

The technology supporting modern litigation has become increasingly sophisticated. Legal teams can process larger volumes of data, apply advanced analytics, automate repeatable tasks, and use generative AI to accelerate work that once required significant manual effort. Those capabilities are changing what’s possible in eDiscovery, but technology alone does not determine whether a matter moves forward effectively. 

Complex legal matters rarely follow a perfectly defined path. Deadlines compress. New custodians or data sources emerge. Production requirements change. A workflow that made sense at the beginning of an investigation may need to be reconsidered as the legal strategy develops. In those moments, the value of a legal services partner is not measured solely by what its platform can do. It’s measured by whether the people supporting the matter understand what the legal team is trying to accomplish and can translate that understanding into action. 

That’s why we view Client Services as more than a support function within eDiscovery. At its best, it connects the goals of the matter to the people, processes, technology, and decisions needed to move the work forward effectively. 

Start With the Matter, Not the Task 

Effective discovery begins before anyone chooses a workflow or configures a technology platform. It begins by understanding the matter itself. 

What’s the history of the litigation or investigation? What outcome is the legal team working toward? Where are the greatest risks? Is the primary pressure time, cost, exposure, or some combination of all three? What has already happened, and what is likely to happen next? 

Those questions provide context that a technical request alone can’t. 

A client may initially ask for processing, search terms, reporting, analytics, or a production. Fulfilling that request accurately is essential, but simply completing the requested task doesn’t necessarily solve the underlying problem. Experienced Client Services professionals understand enough about the broader matter to recognize when a request may create an unintended downstream consequence, when an alternative approach could produce a better result, or when additional resources will be necessary to meet the deadline. 

Chris Cantwell, Senior Managing Director of Client Services at Innovative Driven, describes the objective as becoming “an extension of their case team.” That requires moving beyond a relationship in which the legal team asks, and the provider executes. It means developing enough context and trust to participate meaningfully in decisions about how the work should move forward. 

Access to advanced analytics, generative AI, or automation doesn’t answer the question of where those tools will create the most value. Sometimes the right approach is technological. Sometimes a compressed timeline requires more people or a process change. Often, it requires a combination of resources shaped around the needs of the matter. Understanding that context is what allows Client Services to recommend an approach rather than simply execute a request. 

Working Backward from the Need 

One way to move beyond task-based support is to begin with the end of the matter in mind. 

In eDiscovery, it is natural to think sequentially. Data is collected, processed, analyzed, reviewed, and eventually produced. Those stages provide important structure, but the legal team ultimately needs more than the successful completion of each step. It needs a defensible record of what occurred and results that supports the litigation, investigation, or regulatory response. 

Bobby Ohton, Senior Project Manager at Innovative Driven, describes his approach as working backward from what the client will need when the matter is finished. A production may be the most visible technical deliverable, but it’s not the only thing that matters at the conclusion of an engagement. Project histories, tracking logs, decision records, protocols, reporting, and documented communications can all become valuable if questions arise later or if the client returns with another related matter. 

Working backward changes the questions asked at the beginning. Rather than focusing only on the immediate task, the team considers what the final production needs to look like, what requirements govern it, what to track along the way, and what information the client may need months or even years later. 

That broader matter record also creates continuity. If another project manager needs to step into the engagement, the history shouldn’t reside solely in one person’s memory. If a corporate client returns with another investigation or litigation, the team shouldn’t have to rediscover the client’s preferences from scratch. Over time, documented experience can become a practical client playbook that improves consistency across matters. 

This is where disciplined project management becomes part of true client services. Tracking isn’t simply administrative recordkeeping. Done well, it preserves context, supports defensibility, and lets the knowledge developed in one matter improve the next. 

Client Services Is a Problem-Solving Function 

Strong client service is often associated with responsiveness, and responsiveness is essential. But being responsive does not mean automatically agreeing with every request. 

Legal teams often work under substantial pressure. They may be responding to opposing counsel, preparing for a production deadline, investigating a newly discovered issue, or trying to answer an internal stakeholder who needs information quickly. The request that reaches a Client Services team is often one small piece of a much larger situation. 

Bobby describes that responsibility as understanding what the client is ultimately trying to accomplish, not simply executing the request as presented. In practice, that can mean explaining that a requested approach is unlikely to produce the desired result and offering a different path. It can mean identifying something the client hasn’t yet considered or explaining that a particular deliverable will take longer than expected while finding an interim solution that keeps the matter moving. 

In one matter, for example, a client needed search-term reporting in a format that the existing system could not immediately provide. The easier response would have been to explain the technical limitation and stop there. Instead, the team provided what was available, explained the limitation directly, and worked internally to develop an AI-enabled solution that ultimately produced the reporting the client needed. 

The solution worked because the team understood what the client was ultimately trying to accomplish. They identified the gap between the existing capability and the required result, created an interim path forward, and coordinated the work needed to close that gap. 

A consultative team must understand the problem well enough to know when simply taking the request is insufficient. Strong client service is ultimately about problem-solving, which requires looking beyond the immediate task and helping the client reach the right outcome. 

Transparency is an Operational Discipline 

Complex matters don’t become complex because everything proceeds according to plan. Even with strong processes and experienced teams, unexpected issues can arise. Data can present differently than anticipated. Requirements can change. And, occasionally, people make mistakes. 

How a team responds in those moments often says more about the quality of the relationship than how it performs when everything is going well. 

Transparency is therefore not simply a communication preference. It is an operational discipline.

Chris recalls a matter in which the team discovered after an initial deadline that a portion of data had been missed during the earlier process. The issue had real implications for the client, and there was no useful way to minimize it. The response was to explain what had happened, take responsibility, escalate internally, and mobilize the resources necessary to address the problem quickly. The team maintained frequent communication throughout the recovery and documented the process changes put in place to prevent a recurrence. 

What could easily have ended the client relationship instead strengthened it. The client subsequently returned with additional matters. 

The lesson isn’t that mistakes create loyalty. The lesson is that ownership, transparency, and recovery create confidence when something doesn’t go according to plan. 

In high-pressure legal environments, clients don’t need a partner that pretends every matter will be seamless. They need one that can recognize an issue early, communicate it clearly, mobilize the right people, and stay accountable until it’s resolved. Just as importantly, they need evidence that the organization learned from the experience and improved the process that follows. 

That ability cannot be automated into existence. Processes and technology can support the response. Accountability still belongs to people.  

Human-Centered Support Is an Operational Capability 

Empathy can sound like a soft concept next to processing speeds, analytics, AI, and project metrics. In practice, it has tangible effects on eDiscovery because it shapes how Client Services professionals communicate, prioritize, and respond under pressure. 

Attorneys operating under tight deadlines are rarely managing only one problem. They’re balancing internal stakeholders, outside counsel, regulators, opposing parties, budgets, productions, and business responsibilities at the same time. A Client Services professional who understands that environment approaches the relationship differently from someone who sees only the ticket or technical request in front of them. 

That understanding counts most when the pressure increases. Sometimes a client needs a quick factual answer. Other times, they need context, reassurance, or a broader conversation about what should happen next. Over time, experienced Client Services teams also learn how individual clients prefer to work, how they communicate under pressure, and what information gives them confidence that the matter is under control. 

This is what makes human-centered support an operational capability, not just a service philosophy. Experienced professionals bring judgment, communication, institutional knowledge, and accountability to each interaction, while shared knowledge across the team helps preserve that understanding from one matter to the next. Clients may not remember every technical step involved in a matter, but they remember whether someone understood the situation, communicated clearly when it mattered, and gave them confidence that the work was moving in the right direction.

Client Services Is the Operational Connector 

Modern eDiscovery brings together processing, hosting, analytics, managed review, AI, staffing, and other specialized resources. The challenge is not simply having those capabilities available. It’s coordinating them around the matter’s requirements and maintaining the context that connects one phase of the work to the next. 

Client Services sits at that intersection. 

It connects the legal team to resources as needed. More importantly, it maintains the context that helps those capabilities operate as part of a coordinated eDiscovery approach, rather than a collection of separate services. 

That’s why the strongest Client Services teams are difficult to define as simply “support.” Their role is closer to an extension of the case team: understanding what the legal team needs from discovery, helping determine how best to support those needs, and maintaining accountability as requirements change. 

As eDiscovery continues to evolve, judgment, transparency, accountability, and human connection will remain central to how that work gets done.

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Generative AI tools were used to assist with synthesis, drafting, and editorial refinement of this article. The final article reflects the review, judgment, and approval of Innovative Driven.