Lawyer-led eDiscovery expertise in your corner
Most eDiscovery vendors treat your case as a data problem. Spark treats it as a factual risk and a strategic opportunity — because Spark is run by a litigator.
Sara Jones spent a decade as an associate at major Boston firms, managing document-intensive matters ranging from SEC investigations to complex coverage disputes. She built Spark because small and mid-size litigation firms deserve that same quality of thinking, without the overhead of a full-time hire.
When you bring in Spark, you're not outsourcing to a vendor. You're adding an experienced litigation eDiscovery associate who has read your complaint, understands your strategy, and is thinking about winning your case.
eDiscovery Doesn't Have to Be a Cost Center
Most practices absorb eDiscovery as overhead: vendor hosting and project support invoices are passed through at cost, treating discovery and review strategy as a necessary expense rather than billable work. But it doesn't have to work that way.
Sara is an attorney, which means she can be engaged as a contract associate on your matter. Your firm bills her time to the client at your standard associate rates. The spread between your billing rate and Sara's contract rate stays with the firm.
That's the difference between eDiscovery as a cost center and eDiscovery as a profit driver. You expand capacity, take on more complex discovery work, and keep the margin — without adding headcount, benefits, or long-term overhead.
You may need to add Spark to your professional liability insurance coverage. Contact us to discuss how this could work for your practice and your next matter.
Whether you engage Spark as a contract associate or consulting support, here’s what we bring to your matter:
Work through your discovery requests and responses with a litigator’s eye — thinking about where the key documents are likely to be, how you can tighten your requests to require collection of certain data, where you should push back, and how to substantiate burden so your objections stand up in court.
Draft and help negotiate your ESI Protocol — one of the most consequential early decisions in a document-intensive case. If you agree to something without understanding it, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.
Coordinate with your client's IT team to collect data defensibly and comprehensively, including mobile data, M365, Google Vault, collaboration tools like Slack and Teams, AI prompts and responses, and legacy systems.
Choose the right review platform for your matter and budget — even if it isn’t the one we sell.
Build and supervise a review team when document volume warrants it — or implement AI review technology that can be force multiplier for your most knowledgeable team members.
Get you to the key documents faster using the best search tools and AI available — because the document that changes your case shouldn't surface on day 47 of a 50-day review.
Produce clean, compliant document sets on time, in the right format, with the right metadata and privilege log.
Analyze the other side's production for deficiencies, improper redactions, and documents worth following up on.
Add Spark to your team when a case gets complicated, and you need someone who can keep up.
Sara Jones is a practicing litigator and Certified E-Discovery Specialist (CEDS) with 13+ years of experience in civil litigation and government investigations. She began her career at Ropes & Gray, one of the country's leading litigation firms, and later managed eDiscovery across a varied Boston boutique litigation practice. She founded Spark in 2022.
Sara holds certifications in Everlaw and RelativityOne, and has experience in Reveal, Logikcull, CS DISCO, and more. Because Sara works as a member of your litigation team, her eDiscovery work does not require local bar admission — giving Spark a nationwide service area.
Frequently Asked Questions
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eDiscovery vendors approach your case as a data processing problem — they run broad collections, load the files, manage the review queue as air-traffic control.
Spark’s approach makes legal strategy the driver of all the technical decisions to follow. Sara Jones is a practicing litigator who has managed discovery on document-intensive matters at major firms, which means she's thinking about what the evidence means for your case, not just how to move it through a pipeline.
The difference shows up in practical decisions from the outset: what to collect and what not to, how to negotiate your ESI Protocol to your advantage, which documents to prioritize early, and where the other side is likely to have something worth pushing on. We’re not just batching out documents for review – we’re deciding whether to review full families, what date range will contain the most important documents, whether we can use machine learning to deprioritize review of documents unlikely to be responsive, and which reviewer is most appropriate for the material.
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Yes. Sara is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, but most eDiscovery work — advising on protocols, coordinating collection, managing review, supervising productions — doesn't require local bar admission. Sara works as a member of your litigation team on matters across jurisdictions, supporting the attorneys of record.
Spark has worked with offshore and London-based colleagues, and on U.S. cases in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida, New York, New Jersey and across Massachusetts.
If local admission matters for a specific role on a specific matter, we'll tell you upfront. If Sara is working under your supervision, you may have to add her to your professional liability insurance for the engagement.
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Spark works across civil, commercial, and criminal matters — including business and IP litigation, insurance coverage disputes, employment litigation, international arbitration, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. We also work pre-litigation: when a dispute is on the horizon but hasn't been filed yet, early preservation and collection decisions can set you up for a potential case down the road.
The common thread is document-intensive work where having a litigation-trained lawyer thinking about the discovery — rather than a vendor running a process — actually makes a difference.
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Because Sara is an attorney, your firm can engage her as an outside vendor OR as an hourly contract associate. Your firm bills her time to the client at your standard associate rates; Sara's contract rate sits below your billing rate; the client gets another qualified litigator at an associate rate, and the spread belongs to the firm.
For matters billed hourly where associate time on discovery is expected, this model converts eDiscovery from overhead into a revenue line — without adding headcount, benefits, or long-term costs. Contact us to discuss rates and whether this model fits your matter.
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Spark is designed for small and mid-size litigation practices taking on matters with meaningful document volume — typically solo practitioners or firms without dedicated eDiscovery staff. If your case requires collecting more than a few hundred documents or unfamiliar data types, or if the other side is producing a large “data dump” you need to make sense of, Spark is built for your needs, and you will benefit from our services.
We've managed reviews ranging from a few thousand documents to millions. The key isn't the size of the matter — it's whether you want someone with litigation experience to work as part of your team and run point on discovery, rather than handing it to a vendor and hoping for the best.
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No. Spark is a certified Everlaw partner and it's our preferred platform for most matters because of its ease of use and accessibility. However, we recommend the right tool for each job. We hold certifications in Relativity as well, and we're comfortable working in several other platforms.