Peer to Peer Magazine

32 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SPRING 2017 CASE STUDIES Have I Got a Deal for You: Selling TAR Like a Pro It's your job to sell the customer (case team) tools that will make document review cheaper and faster. These tools have been around for over a decade and are proven to reduce the time and cost associated with document review. Easy sell, right? Wrong. Through the use of TAR, we can eliminate lesser inclusive portions of an email thread, find near-duplicate documents to streamline the redaction process, cluster conceptually similar documents, visualize communication paerns and use machine- learning techniques to rank documents based on human review. But if you think the benefits of using TAR sell themselves, you'd be mistaken. Despite being around for some time, these tools are foreign to many case teams, or applying TAR is theoretical and difficult for them to put into the context of their maer. To become successful in the adoption of TAR technologies, you must sell TAR like a pro. Time Shares and TAR If you have never aended a time share sales pitch, it involves a salesperson who drives you to a destination, gives you a presentation and spends an hour or more going over scenarios of how purchasing a time share will save you money in the long run. I'm not advocating for driving your case teams to a secluded office building and holding them hostage while you (and several other individuals) try to convince them to use TAR, but what I suggest is that you use some of the tactics salespeople employ during the time share pitch. The time share sales pitch involves three parts: A demonstration of what you are selling and how great it is; A projection of costs and cost savings over time; and Convincing the buyer to step out of their comfort zone and invest. Get the Case Team To Take the Tour Just like selling a time share, you can't sell unless you get the customer to take the tour. This is the first step to achieving buy-in. Have a 15-second (or less) elevator pitch. Your goal is to get the case team to the demo, not to explain how the product works. You can try something like this: "I thought you might be interested in hearing how we reduced our reviewable data set by 40 percent using technology- assisted review. We saved thousands in review costs, prioritized the most relevant documents and shaved days off the review. I'd love to see if we can do the same thing with your case. Can we set up a time to demonstrate these savings for you?" Any flavor of this will work. The important things to include in your elevator pitch are a quantifiable cost savings to get their aention, reference to a past success with another case team and an actionable item — ask to set up a demo. If you have no prior experience with TAR, ask your preferred service provider for a success story and use that as your elevator pitch. If the person you're pitching to seems skeptical, have a credible reference ready to go. Provide the names Whether you are a project manager, technologist, attorney, or paralegal, if you are pitching the use of technology-assisted review (TAR), you are in sales. by Oliver Silva Have I Got a Deal for You: Selling TAR Like a Pro 1 2 3

• Cover