Safari SOP Reinvents Legal Workflows Again

This article, dated August 5, 2022 and written by Rob Thomas, Vice President of Strategic Development for Safari SOP, describes how Safari SOP reinvents legal workflows: how the Bellevue, Washington-based software company built an online system for law departments and legal order processing teams to handle subpoenas, document requests, account garnishments, and levies. It traces the company to the team behind Serengeti Tracker.

Key points

• The Serengeti team reunited in 2019 as Safari SOP, "SOP" standing for "service of process." In 2001 they built Serengeti Tracker, which the article says transformed electronic invoice processing for corporate law departments; Serengeti agreed to be acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2010, and it is now called Legal Tracker.
• Safari SOP launched in 2020, during a global pandemic. The article says it has reached both small and large law departments, including Fortune 100 banks and two of the top five employers in the United States.
• The heart of Safari SOP is its "SecureShare" document delivery portal: no limits on file size, file type, or number of files, no delivery costs or delays, a permanent audit trail of when documents are made available to and downloaded by the serving party, encryption at rest and during transmission, and built-in two-factor authentication. Safari SOP handles all aspects of user IDs and passwords with the serving party.
• For cost recovery, checking a box auto-generates an invoice. The requesting party can see that the files are ready, but must first pay the company's invoice using a standard credit card processing interface. Tyler Williams, Associate General Counsel of ABC Supplies, reports that "[w]ith Safari's cost recovery features, we're collecting more in one month than we did in the past 16 years."
• Customers report saving 45 minutes per matter with automated intake, customizable templates, key date and status tracking, compliance warnings, and automated response delivery and cost recovery.
• Safari SOP's second product, for account garnishments and levies, targets financial institutions and retailers that receive high volumes of legal orders to seize funds.

Common questions

Why did the team build a subpoena response system?

A bank asked Tom Melling, Safari SOP's CEO, whether he knew of any subpoena response software. The bank wanted a better way to deliver responsive documents electronically and to collect payment for its subpoena response work. It was sending paper invoices, and collecting succeeded only 20% of the time. The Serengeti team built the system the bank needed.

What is wrong with the usual ways of delivering responsive documents?

Email typically imposes file size limits, and encrypted email and FTP sites mean managing credentials with a third party. Photocopying and overnighting paper is time-consuming and expensive, and sending flash drives violates most law department and law firm security protocols.