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As the largest family-operated food service distributor in North America, Gordon Food Service takes pride in having maintained the same innovative spirit and integrity throughout its 120 years of operation.
And it’s precisely that passion for innovation that keeps its legal team ahead of the curve when it comes to leveraging technology to increase efficiency and security. A small but nimble team of 8, they handle everything they can in-house, and they are always on the lookout for creative solutions to do more with less.
Like many in-house legal teams, Gordon Food Service was managing a host of legal holds on their own—although manually, across dozens of spreadsheets. With a spreadsheet-based process and an average of 10 holds per month, the team ended up spending an entire week every month just drafting and issuing legal holds. But in GFS’s team, a process like this is always living on borrowed time...
After only two days of using Logikcull Hold, Gordon Food Service’s legal team had fully streamlined its legal holds process. The results followed right away:
With Logikcull, Gordon Food Service’s legal team was able to:
- Start a legal hold in 20 minutes
- Reduce the time to issue a legal hold by 90%
- Automate reminders and hold releases
- Become 12x more productive
But it’s not all about speed. Getting rid of their cumbersome spreadsheet system allowed GFS to make their legal hold process much more secure and defensible by reducing risks derived from human error.
At the same time, the team was able to generate long-term value by being able to maximize resources and keep most responsibilities and control in house.
As Lindsay Kolar, Corporate Paralegal at GFS, puts it: “Logikcull Hold allows us to issue holds quickly, ensure consistency in our process, and manage our holds easily with much greater efficiency.”
From Hours of Manual Work to Clicking a Button
Before implementing Logikcull Hold, Kolar had to maintain 5 spreadsheets per hold, where she also kept track of acknowledgments, reminders, and released custodians. On, average, it took her 3 to 4 hours to create and issue a legal hold, which was only manageable with a low volume of holds per month.
But it all changed in 2020 when the GFS’s team started handling legal holds for their claims and insurance group. All of a sudden, their volume of legal holds increased by 5x, which led the team to immediately turn to technology to put an end to their spreadsheet-based process.
When looking for a solution to automate legal holds, the team realized that Logikcull’s simple but powerful functionality was exactly what they needed. They didn’t see a use for all the bells and whistles of highly sophisticated tools.
What used to take a week takes less than half a day now. Issuing a hold is as easy as collecting all the information they need, selecting the appropriate template within Logikcull, and clicking a button to send it to all the custodians. According to Kolar, “We would have had to hire another paralegal had we not brought Logikcull onboard. I just didn’t have the time for it.”
But the increased efficiency goes beyond the step of issuing a hold. The team also sets automated reminders for acknowledgments and, when it comes to releasing custodians, Kolar just needs to press a button that says “Release” and immediately notifies everyone that the hold is over.
With the right technology in place, Gordon Food Service was able to establish a much more efficient, secure, and reliable legal hold process. Thanks to their innovative spirit and long-term vision, GFS is now well-positioned to continue managing the entire legal process in-house—bringing permanent efficiency, security, and affordability to their legal holds.
“Logikcull Hold allows us to issue holds quickly, ensure consistency in our process, and manage our holds easily with much greater efficiency." - Lindsay Kolar, Corporate Paralegal at Gordon Food Service
Ready to burn your spreadsheets and fully automate your legal hold process? Start a free trial of Logikcull Hold today.
