A Service for Solicitors and Barristers
Structured intelligence for serious litigation.
Elämä Consulting takes the full documentary record of a dispute and returns a structured litigation intelligence pack: chronology, evidence schedule, party mapping, witness statement drafts, and an argument matrix tying every contention to the documents that support it. Fixed fee, 2 to 4 weeks, written so that any solicitor or barrister can pick it up and run with it.
The Problem
By the time a dispute reaches counsel, the material sits in a dozen incompatible places: years of email, exported message threads, board minutes, company filings and bank statements. Nothing is dated consistently, the same person appears under four addresses, and no single document tells the story, because the story only appears once the documents are read against each other.
Conventional practice solves this with hours. Paralegals and associates read, list and summarise, and that reading is the largest single line in a document-heavy matter. What it buys is organisation rather than insight.
The two adjacent options do not close the gap. Electronic bundling providers arrange documents into a hearing bundle, which is production work priced as production. AI software platforms sell licences per user and leave the analysis to the firm's own fee earners, who then have a new tool to learn on a live matter.
Bundling arranges documents. Software sells seats. Elämä delivers the analysis.
60% to 70%
of total eDiscovery cost is document review
Around 70%
reduction in review time reported for AI-assisted review
2 to 4 weeks
from complete materials to delivered pack
Methodology
The instructing firm sees the structured record at the end of stage 02, before analysis begins, so that scope can be corrected while correcting it is still cheap.
01
Elämä receives the firm's brief and the raw record: email archives as PST or MBOX, forwarded threads, company filings, board minutes, shareholder registers, financial records and contact lists. Everything is loaded into a working case database. Nothing is discarded, and nothing is summarised before it has been indexed.
02
Every item is dated, attributed to a sender and recipients, deduplicated and indexed. Parties are resolved to single identities across every address and alias they used, which is where most manual reviews quietly lose material. A chronology is then assembled from the record itself rather than from anyone's recollection of it.
03
The structured record is interrogated by AI-assisted review across the full corpus, read against a local repository of the relevant legislation, procedural rules and witness evidence. Each contention is tested against the documents that bear on it, relationships between parties are mapped, and gaps, contradictions and unexplained transactions are surfaced.
04
The output is assembled into a pack that can be opened and used the same day: chronology, evidence schedule, party map, witness statement drafts, counsel argument analyses, and a case introduction stating what the record establishes and where it is thin.
What You Receive
Delivered in the firm's preferred format. Searchable PDF and spreadsheet as standard, with the underlying structured database available on request so the firm can query the record itself.
Every material event in date order, each entry cited to its source document and to that document's location in the record.
Court-ready schedule of documents: date, author, recipients, description, relevance, and the issue each document goes to.
Every named party, their roles, and the documented links between them, including directorships, shareholdings, corporate interests and communication patterns.
First drafts prepared from the documentary record, ready for the instructing firm to review, verify with the witness and finalise.
The case as it would be put, and the case as it would be answered, with the documentary support and the weak point of each contention identified.
A short standalone summary of the dispute, the parties, the issues, and what the record establishes, written for someone reading in for the first time.
Regulatory position
Elämä Consulting is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or conduct litigation. Every deliverable is an AI-assisted reading of the record, produced for the instructing firm to adopt, amend or discard on its own professional judgement. The work product and the conduct of the matter remain the property and the responsibility of the instructing firm.
Engagements are accepted on Elämä's Terms and Conditions, which set out what a deliverable is, the instructing firm's obligation to verify it before use, and how liability is allocated between us.
How Engagements Run
Client material is handled on the assumption that it is the most sensitive thing the firm holds.
| Case triage | 3 to 5 working days |
|---|---|
| Litigation intelligence pack | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Full case build and trial support | First pack in 2 to 4 weeks |
| Complex multi-party matters | Scoping call first |
| Expedited delivery | Quoted separately |
Pricing
Project pricing exists because the advantage here is speed. Work that would take a fee earner eighty hours takes a fraction of that against a structured record, and a time-based fee would hand that efficiency back as a discount rather than pay for the result. A fixed fee also gives the firm one disbursement figure to approve and pass on. All figures exclude VAT.
Tier 1
£1,500 to £2,500
Fixed fee
Two to three days. Document inventory, skeleton chronology, issues list, early observations on the shape of the record, and a recommendation on whether a full build is warranted.
Tier 2, the full service
£6,000 to £12,000
Fixed fee
Structured chronology, searchable evidence database, cross-referenced document index, party and relationship mapping, witness statement drafts, and an argument and evidence matrix.
Tier 3
£15,000 to £35,000+
Scoped per matter
Tier 2 plus iterative analysis through to trial: disclosure support, updating as evidence arrives, and bundle and reference preparation. Ongoing retainers run at £2,500 to £4,000 per month for three to four days against an active matter.
£900 + VAT
Headline day rate
£750 + VAT
Committed blocks of five days or more
£500 to £1,500
Jurisdiction onboarding, charged once per jurisdiction
The day rate is secondary. It applies where scope genuinely cannot be defined in advance: trial support of unpredictable duration, scoping at the firm's request, and conferences with counsel.
Complexity-based pricing on request. Multi-party matters, very large records and compressed timetables are quoted individually. International fees are quoted at the same level as UK work, in the client's local currency.
Tier 1 is the recommended way to start. It is small enough for a partner to approve without a committee.
Who Does the Work
Samuel Barlow
Founder, Elämä Consulting
Samuel Barlow built a complete litigation case pack in a live shareholder and director dispute in England and Wales, working alone from raw email archives, company filings and financial records through to a full evidence schedule, chronology, relationship map, witness statements, and prosecuting and opposing counsel analyses. That build is the origin of this service and of the method it uses. He works in structured databases, SQL, and current AI models applied to large documentary records.
Litigation Intelligence is the Elämä Consulting service line for solicitors and barristers, sold to firms rather than to litigants. A 30-minute scoping call with Samuel Barlow is enough to establish whether a matter suits this service and which tier fits it. The call is free and carries no obligation.
Email a short description of the matter and its approximate document volume. Elämä Consulting replies within one working day with a tier recommendation and a fixed quote, and will sign an NDA before any material is shared.
Request a Consultation