How a Leading Energy Company Shaved Weeks off Compliance Audits with Everlaw
Business Outcomes
Without the right tools, this U.S. company would have had to spend weeks reviewing 300,000 documents manually or ship the set to outside counsel.
Using Everlaw to handle it internally, the small team culled the data set down to the most relevant 2,000 records for estimated savings of $140,000.
For years, the three-person compliance team at this major energy management firm moved mountains to prevent disputes from escalating into litigation. The reason for the prodigious effort was not the number of disagreements, but the sheer volume and complexity of the data involved in daily communications.
The U.S. company is a recognized leader in wholesale energy marketing and services for commercial and industrial clients across North America. Its operations generate thousands of chats and other information daily as traders and sales representatives interact with customers. As with any business, those communications don't always go smoothly.
The company’s Director of Compliance said that piecing together what may have led to customer pricing disagreements — often triggered by unexpected events like major weather-related outages — could take up weeks and pull him away from his other critical responsibilities. On the occasions when outside counsel were called in to assist with review, the fees quickly added up.
“Whenever there’s any kind of dispute with a customer, whether it's legal or not, it ends up on my desk,” the compliance director said. “I’m the one who needs to figure out what actually happened and what was said between parties.”
Our old process left giant holes in what might actually be out there. Now I can spend the same amount of time and actually look at records that matter.
In the last couple of years, the company has tackled the compliance audit process from an operational perspective. Since adopting Everlaw, it has dramatically reduced the time and effort required to surface the facts that would help lead to resolution — from over a month to about a single work day in one recent matter. And this year, the team took it a step beyond compliance, leveraging Everlaw to also support litigation and bringing in a law firm only for targeted tasks.
Method | Total # Documents | Time to Review | Hours Saved | Est. Cost Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Manual | 300,000 | ~ 6 weeks (240 hours) | N/A | N/A |
Everlaw | 300,000 | ~ 8 hours | 232 | $140,000 |
“It used to be a big effort requiring a lot of outside counsel and a lot of fees,” the compliance director said. “Since we’ve implemented Everlaw, we have found that we can manage almost everything internally.”
Why Outlook Was Never the Right Tool
Force majeure events are a major concern in the energy industry. When a supplier can’t deliver due to unforeseen disruptions, customers may face blackouts or production interruptions. These often trigger disputes. Was the customer properly notified? Was the cost explained? Customers may balk at the higher bill and refuse to pay.
The company's compliance director has played a critical role in resolving these issues before they escalate. He reviews all communications between customers and customer representatives to clarify what was agreed on. On a typical day, that means more than 100 messages exchanged by 100 traders using a secure, industry-specific chat platform, all coalated in an email file. Before Everlaw, when disputes came up, he’d have to sort through hundreds of thousands of these messages using Microsoft Outlook.
But Outlook, which wasn’t built for discovery, doesn’t support threaded views or large volumes of data. He had to split datasets into smaller files for processing. The special industry chat app complicated things further: users were identified on the platform only by internal numeric IDs, not names or companies. And the exported emails lacked “to” and “from” fields, making it nearly impossible to understand who said what.
He faced what is a common pain point for legal teams across industries: meeting compliance and litigation demands with a jury-rigged toolkit and exhausting manual labor.
“It was a nightmare,” he said. “I had to do high-level keyword searches, open messages one by one, and copy PDF data into folders for later review. It was incredibly time-consuming.”
Everlaw was just about the only software that could even remotely handle the chat information in a way that made sense. Most of the other systems absolutely choked on it.
When “Good Enough” Was Suddenly “Not Enough”
In the past, legal and compliance teams were more likely to accept the delays caused by tools that were not designed for the work. But with today’s soaring volumes of digital data, the cost of that outdated approach is harder to ignore.
At the energy company, that realization hit home during a regulatory investigation involving a former employee. With urgent pressure to unearth relevant communications, the Director of Compliance had no choice but to manually chip away at nearly 200,000 documents. The effort took him the better part of two months. More pressingly, his other responsibilities came to a standstill. “None of my other work was getting done, which meant that filings were late and we incurred some fines,” he said.
The situation made clear that a better solution was needed — and leadership agreed to invest in new technology.
Everlaw felt like a true business tool with a wide range of applications — not just a narrow solution for discovery and production.
Choosing Everlaw for Versatility and Ease
The company evaluated several platforms before selecting Everlaw. What they needed was a flexible, easy-to-use tool suited not just for corporate compliance and audit workflows, but also for traditional discovery.
The compliance director found that many other options were narrowly designed for litigation. In contrast, Everlaw offered the adaptability he was looking for — and crucially, it could handle the company’s chat data without breaking.
“Everlaw was just about the only software that could even remotely handle the chat information in a way that made sense,” he said. “Most of the other systems absolutely choked on it.”
Everlaw features that stood out included fast, powerful search, robust tagging and organization tools, intuitive visualizations, and a dedicated Early Case Assessment, or ECA, environment.
“Everlaw felt like a true business tool with a wide range of applications — not just a narrow solution for discovery and production,” he said.
Reducing Risk by Surfacing the Right Information
Everlaw has transformed the firm’s internal compliance audit process. Instead of relying on random manual samplings from massive data sets, the compliance director can now run targeted searches and trust that he’s pulling up the most relevant content.
“Customers will make claims about what they were told or what they knew. And it works both ways. We have found cases where they’re right. They were not informed properly of what was going to happen,” he said. “With Everlaw, it's very easy to go find those conversations so we're able to avoid the need for legal action.”
Before, he had no visibility. “Our old process left giant holes in what might actually be out there,” he said. “Now I can spend the same amount of time and actually look at records that matter.”
Dramatically Reducing Manual Effort to Cut Costs
The company's team is currently working on a matter that is headed for court — their first true legal discovery project. With Everlaw’s ECA features, they’ve been able to narrow a dataset of 300,000 emails, text messages, and documents down to just the 2,000 relevant records — all in less than eight hours.
Previously, that process would have taken more than a month of laborious manual review using unsuitable tools. With Everlaw, even follow-up inquiries related to the regulatory investigation, which once consumed weeks, now take “literally an hour, 30 minutes.”
“Since we started working in Everlaw, other things have come up where we have been able to just knock stuff out really fast,” the compliance director said.
Our outside counsel found Everlaw really easy to use. They commented on the flexibility and user friendliness of it.
By handling large-scale review internally, the company’s data is more secure because it doesn’t have to be shipped out in bulk. The team also avoids the high external fees that come with outsourcing unnecessarily large data sets for review.
His team can invite outside counsel and other partners to collaborate directly within the platform in real time, with full visibility into the documents handled and the amount of time spent. The compliance director estimates that, assuming a $600/hour associate billing rate, cutting a six-week manual review (240 hours) down to just eight hours would save roughly $140,000 in legal service fees.
Their law firm also got up to speed relatively quickly. “Once our outside counsel got it, they found Everlaw really easy to use,” he said. “They commented on the flexibility and user friendliness of it.”
Making Investments That Pay Off
Not every company faces a lot of litigation. Still, as the story of this energy client illustrates, corporate compliance professionals can get overwhelmed, too. Without the right tools, the escalating volume of modern business communications can bury teams in manual review — with no clear path out.
For the compliance director, the impact of working with Everlaw was immediate. Whether auditing business communications or reviewing documents for litigation, his small in-house team can now navigate massive datasets — across even the most complex formats — with speed and confidence. Tasks that once took weeks or months now take hours — or even minutes. That kind of agility allows the company to resolve issues faster and avoid unnecessary legal action without derailing day-to-day responsibilities.
“Everlaw is a great tool,” the Director of Compliance said. “It’s been extremely useful for us, and it’s been a tremendous money and time saver.”
