CASE STUDY
How a large employer reduced the burden of responding to subpoenas
For a company in a high-turnover industry, a lot of employees means a lot of subpoenas and records requests. Legal ops teams find a way to respond, but the process is usually clunky and takes up too much time and money. When their Legal Tracker salesperson recommended Safari SOP, Red Robin decided to look into how they could do better.
THE CHALLENGE
Manual response with limited resources
With a small legal team, Red Robin always
looks for efficiencies, and subpoena
responses were taking up too much time. The
company receives subpoenas via registered
agent, mail, fax, and service at restaurants
—which complicates intake and routing.
Oversight presented another challenge:
without a shared system, managers had no
simple way to either see the team’s overall
workload or check on a specific response.
For individual team members, every step
was manual, including drafting routine
correspondence and declarations. Doing their
work and tracking it also duplicated effort,
as they recorded progress in spreadsheets,
stored response documents in network drive
folders, and kept paper copies of productions.
For each response, they prepped and shipped
a FedEx package. They focused on getting
accurate responses out the door, with no time
to invoice and pursue cost recovery.
CLIENT PROFILE
Red Robin International
HEADQUARTERS
Denver, Colorado
EMPLOYEES
23,000
OLD PROCESS
Tracked with spreadsheets
OLD DELIVERY
Email or FedEx package
OLD INVOICING
none
“Prior to Safari, responding to subpoenas took a lot of effort, and we knew we were leaving money on the table.”
Christina Santangelo
Litigation Manager, Red Robin
Litigation Manager, Red Robin
Safari SOP How Red Robin took control and cut unnecessary work
“As a large employer with a small legal
team, we need to punch above our weight.
With the pivot to a mostly remote work
environment, paper-based processes and
makeshift systems are more inefficient and
dangerous than ever.
Safari is addressing our specific needs, not
just at the GC level, but more importantly at
the team’s level. It makes their life easier.”
Michael Kaplan
Chief Legal Officer, Red Robin
Chief Legal Officer, Red Robin
THE SOLUTION
Replace manual processes with Safari
Using Safari to automate work they used to do manually, is saving Red Robin significant time and effort.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
- Red Robin now tracks all key details in a single system. They store correspondence and response docs in the same system, with no need to keep separate copies.
- Safari’s workflow simplifies internal communication, QA, and legal review.
- Safari captures all actions taken, so there’s no need to separately record status or progress.
AUTOMATED CORRESPENDENCE
- Red Robin auto-generates standard email messages to issuers (for example, acknowledging receipt and estimating fees to respond).
- Forms (for example, custodian declarations) are now stored as templates and auto-populated in Safari.
INTEGRATED ONLINE DELIVERY
- Instead of shipping responses, Red Robin uses Safari’s built-in portal. The system sends login credentials to the issuer and makes responsive documents available for download.
RECOVERING COSTS
- With guidance from Safari data about other companies’ response fees, Red Robin developed a cost recovery policy and fee schedule.
- Using Safari’s automated invoicing and collection, they now average over $100 recovered per subpoena.
“Safari is saving us about 30-60 minutes
per subpoena. The template feature is
so intuitive. I pick which letter we want to
send, and it sends!”
Christina Santangelo
Litigation Manager, Red Robin
Litigation Manager, Red Robin
CONCLUSION
Safari SOP makes it possible
Safari is the first system designed specifically
to meet the challenges of routine information
requests. It’s a simple-to-deploy alternative
that is providing quantifiable benefits to
customers. In fact, Safari might be your law
department’s easiest opportunity for process
improvement.
NEXT STEPS
- Schedule a live demo of Safari conducted over Zoom meeting: safariSOP.com/demo
- Visit the “Watering Hole” to view additional resources: safariSOP.com/resources