Your Discovery Agent Tracks Every Response Deadline While You Litigate
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks Discovery Agent takes the tracking and assembly work of discovery off your litigation associates and paralegals. Today each Matter has a spreadsheet of requests and response dates that drifts out of sync with the docket the moment a stipulated extension is agreed by email. Associates spend evenings drafting objections that follow the same standard bases every time. Paralegals assemble production sets by hand and fix Bates numbering when two sets overlap. The privilege log is rebuilt from review notes at the end, when everyone is tired.
The stakes are not administrative. One missed discovery deadline can result in sanctions or an adverse inference, and it lands on the Client, not on the spreadsheet.
What the Discovery Agent does, step by step
The Discovery Agent starts with the communication that keeps discovery moving, then does the document work behind it.
- Logs each request as it arrives. When interrogatories, requests for production or requests for admission are served, the Discovery Agent records each set against the Matter with its service date and method, and calculates the response date under the rules your attorney has set for that court, for the attorney to confirm.
- Sends deadline reminders. It reminds the responsible associate and paralegal ahead of each response date, again as the date approaches, and escalates to the supervising partner when a response is not yet in draft.
- Chases the Client for documents. It emails the Client's designated custodians, including the right contacts at a Client Organization, with the specific categories the requests call for, follows up on what has not arrived and logs what was received and when.
- Updates the calendar when dates move. When the attorney records an agreed extension, it updates the response date in Clio and on the team's calendar, so the deadline lives in one place.
- Drafts first-pass objections. For each request it prepares a draft response with your firm's standard objection bases, such as overbreadth, undue burden, privilege and vagueness, for the associate to edit and decide.
- Assembles production sets. It collects the documents the review team marked responsive and not privileged, applies sequential Bates numbering that continues from the last production and prepares the cover letter for attorney signature.
- Builds the privilege log. From the review metadata, such as date, author, recipients, document type and the privilege basis the reviewer tagged, it produces the privilege log in the format the court or the parties agreed.
The Discovery Agent never serves anything on its own authority. Every response, production and log goes out under an attorney's review and signature.
Where the work is recorded
Everything the Discovery Agent does is recorded on the Matter, where the whole team can see it.
In Clio, each discovery request carries its service date, response date, any extension with the email that agreed it, the draft responses and the final served version. Production sets record their Bates ranges and the date they were served, so the next set starts at the right number. The privilege log is saved with the production it supports, in NetDocuments or the document management system your firm uses.
On the Client record in the CRM, the team sees every document request sent to the Client's custodians, each follow-up and each delivery, so a partner calling the Client knows exactly what is still outstanding.
The next morning, the associate opens the Matter and sees which responses are due this week, which drafts are ready for review, which Client documents are still missing and which production is ready for signature. They pick up exactly where the agent left off. An agent that could not record its results would just be a chatbot; this one leaves a discovery record you could hand to the court.
What your people do instead
Your associates spend their hours on the judgement discovery actually requires: which objections to stand on, what to concede, how to handle the meet-and-confer with opposing counsel. Your paralegals review production sets instead of numbering them, and spend time with the Client's staff making collection easier on a business that has its own work to do.
The partner stays with the Client, explaining where the case stands and what discovery has revealed, instead of worrying about whether a response date slipped.
Deadline discipline begins at the first call. For how Matters enter the firm with their dates flagged, see fixing the broken law firm intake pipeline and eliminating client intake bottlenecks.
One next step
To see whether discovery management or another workflow should go to an agent first, take the free Legal Industry Assessment. It shows which workflow an agent should take first in your practice. To see the AgentWorks Discovery Agent alongside the other agents built for law firms, visit the Legal industry page.
See where the Discovery Agent would start in your legal business.
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