Key Takeaway: The pace of change in legal AI is faster than many legal processes can support. Engaging peers enables legal teams to pressure-test workflows, document controls, and strengthen oversight. As a result, operational decisions become smarter before new technologies create risk faster than teams can manage it. In turn, they validate requirements, standardize workflows, and streamline change management, making success metrics evident.

In a time when AI is constantly evolving and the pace of change is greater than ever before, teams are struggling to assess what they should be doing to keep up. What is best practice? What is defensible? What will provide ROI?

Finding success in this environment depends not only on selecting the right technologies, but on developing thoughtful, defensible, and repeatable processes for using them effectively. Engaging with organizations that face similar operational, legal, and technology challenges enables teams to better understand how others are designing workflows. Collaboration enhances understanding as to how peers are governing new tools while managing change and measuring outcomes. These insights equip legal teams to move beyond theory and make more confident decisions about how to mature their own operating models. 

The Epiq Managed Services (EMS) user group is a powerful example of connecting professionals with their peers. Discussions take place in a safe setting where leaders can gut check their thoughts, practices, and ideas. Are we on the right track? What do like-minded and smart professionals think? In some ways it’s simple, but it’s also very powerful and not a forum or opportunity that is easy to replicate. The greatest value lies in the chance to connect and learn from peers.

Process Maturity as a Strategic Advantage

Although every organization has its own risk profile, matter portfolio, technology ecosystem, and governance requirements, many are working through similar questions: How should we standardize workflows? Which metrics best demonstrate efficiency, cost control, and quality? How can AI and other emerging technologies be introduced without compromising defensibility?

Peer collaboration provides a forum to test assumptions, compare approaches, and learn from real-world experience. The goal is not to copy another organization’s model, but to understand how peers evaluate their options, address stakeholder concerns, document controls, and ensure repeatable processes advance strategic goals. That perspective shortens the learning curve, reduces avoidable risk, and focuses investment where it is most likely to create lasting and consequential value.

Why AI Makes Peer Collaboration More Important

The rise of generative AI, agentic workflows, advanced analytics, and other emerging technologies transforms how legal teams must think about process design. The conversation now ranges from whether these capabilities have value to how they can be deployed responsibly, consistently, and at scale. For eDiscovery and legal operations teams, that shift is especially important because outcomes must remain explainable, quality controlled, and defensible

Peer dialogue enables clients to focus on the questions that determine success: 

• Which AI use cases are appropriate?
• What human oversight is required?
• How should validation be documented?
• How should legal, compliance, IT, outside counsel, and service providers align before using a new workflow on a live matter?

These are process questions as much as technology questions, and they benefit from shared experience.

Where Peer Insight Adds Value

Survey responses from one recent EMS user group event highlighted the unmistakable value of learning from peer collaboration. 100% of respondents agreed that, based on their experience at the event, interacting with peers provides ideas, perspectives, or best practices that they can apply within their own organization.
One participant from Saul Ewing LLP emphasized the value of conversing with peers about how certain offerings “enable a better early case assessment (ECA) workflow to cull unnecessary data, leverage key documents to inform search strategy, and ultimately create a cleaner, more dialed-in data set to promote to review."

The following principles came to the forefront during the event, offering guidance for legal teams striving to meet the demands of AI:

• Governance and Acceptable Use: Define approved use cases, escalation paths, validation requirements, and documentation expectations.
• Workflow Standardization: Compare repeatable approaches across data intake, processing, ECA, review, production, and reporting.
• Quality Control and Defensibility: Measure accuracy, preserve human oversight, validate outputs, and document key decisions.
• Change Management and Adoption: Train stakeholders, manage resistance, and align legal, compliance, IT, outside counsel, and service provider teams.
• Metrics and Improvement: Identify measures that demonstrate value and monitor performance while controlling cost and supporting ongoing optimization.

Managed Services as a Platform for Shared Learning

A managed services environment provides a strong foundation for this type of learning. Clients often share common objectives of improving consistency, reducing operational burden, and increasing transparency, while adopting new capabilities in a controlled manner. Managed services teams facilitate these discussions by bringing cross-client perspective, operational experience, and practical knowledge of how workflows are implemented in real matters.

AI and other emerging technologies will only continue to evolve, and the ability to evaluate them through the lens of process, governance, and measurable outcomes is increasingly important. Peer learning, supported by experienced managed services teams, allows clients to distinguish between innovation that is merely interesting and innovation that is operationally ready.

From Shared Experience to Better Outcomes

Harnessing the value of peer discussions requires teams to structure and orient candid peer discussions toward action. Forums such as roundtables, advisory sessions, benchmarking conversations, and facilitated working groups give clients a space to explore common challenges in a confidential and constructive setting.
No organization should have to answer every process question in isolation. By learning from peers, clients gain a clearer view of what is working, where risks may arise, and how to build more resilient workflows for the future. In a market that is rapidly innovating, shared learning becomes an essential strategy to enhance decision-making and achieve better outcomes.

Learn more about Epiq Managed Services.

Brandon Hollinder, Vice President, eDiscovery and Cyber Solutions
Brandon works with clients to ensure effective design and expert implementation of their technology and professional service solutions. He guides clients in their journeys as they look to adopt and successfully integrate advanced analytics and generative AI solutions, among others.

Alan K. Rushforth, Director, Solution Architects
Alan leverages over 30 years of litigation support experience to develop managed services solutions for corporate legal departments and law firms. Prior to joining Epiq, he served as the director of litigation and practice support for an Am Law 200 firm, managing a team of 13 litigation support professionals and serving more than 400 lawyers.

Matt Smith, Solutions Architect
Matt Smith partners with clients to define project requirements and develop strategic workflows for complex eDiscovery matters. His experience spans the full eDiscovery lifecycle, including data collection, processing, AI workflows, hosting, and managed review. With over two decades of experience supporting clients, Matt leverages technology and best practices to deliver efficient, defensible, and strategically aligned eDiscovery outcomes.