Epiq uses Microsoft Copilot Studio and other Power Platform tools to drive efficiency and reduce costs

Epiq is a global technology-enabled services leader to law firms, corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies. With almost 8,000 associates and operations worldwide, Epiq offers solutions for large-scale and complex client matters such as class action lawsuits, mass torts, bankruptcies, eDiscovery, and more. The company has a long track record of successfully managing highly visible litigation, regulatory, and compliance projects.

For Epiq, handling large class action lawsuits on behalf of major corporations often involves tens of thousands of claimants. This can generate huge spikes in volume to Epiq’s call center, often resulting in long wait times.   

To better manage this traffic, Epiq has developed AI-driven agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio. The agents use generative answers in Copilot Studio to address common questions around a class action suit, such as eligibility and how to file a claim. Claimants can also enter an existing file number to obtain personalized information directly from the agent. If claimants require more assistance, they can be automatically transferred to a live call center agent. 

At the time of development, a pre-built connector wasn’t available for the company’s specific call center platform, but the team was able to develop a custom handoff adaptor in Copilot Studio. The component was then added to a custom component collection, making it easier to reuse for AI agents developed for other class action suits. 

The Copilot Studio project quickly met expectations, with one AI agent successfully able to handle almost 50,000 messages for one of Epiq’s largest class action cases. 

To provide even greater support, the team is testing an autonomous agent which can answer questions that customers submit over email. The agent scans a general inbox, emails responses, and can even send follow-up emails. Customer emails that require further attention are automatically routed to another mailbox managed by employees. 

Copilot Studio for IT support 

Epiq is also using Copilot Studio to streamline internal operations. 

The company’s latest AI agent “Eva” provides a wide range of IT support services for employees. The agent makes it easier to look up travel and HR policies and other corporate information stored in Dataverse and SharePoint. Connectivity to Service Now, Epiq’s IT support system, enables employees to open helpdesk tickets and quickly check on their status. 

With Microsoft Entra integration, Eva streamlines access to Verkada, the company’s security software, for quicker access to building locations. Eva can also be used to create and modify distribution groups in Microsoft Exchange and create channels in Microsoft Teams. 

“With Microsoft Copilot Studio, we have developed an AI agent that can handle an amazingly wide range of IT requests from employees,” said Jordan Bardwell, Manager, Rapid Development and Innovation at Epiq. The plan is to add even more capabilities in the future, including integration to Workday and Okta.

Power Platform for onboarding automation

Along with Copilot Studio, Epiq is effectively leveraging other parts of Power Platform to drive its enterprise-wide applications. A good example of this is the company’s ‘Launchpad’ onboarding solution. 

Launchpad is delivering game-changing benefits, saving Epiq approximately 2,000 hours of work each month and more than USD$500,000 annually in associated costs. “It used to take week or more to onboard an employee. With our automated system, that same process takes just a few days,” Bardwell said.

As a project-driven organization, Epiq is often required to build teams in a hurry. That can be hard to do with a very small IT team. Launchpad was developed to help automate many aspects of the onboarding process, including ordering and tracking of laptops, provisioning of Outlook accounts, and managing of employee documentation. The system can also be used to automatically compile and report on laptop inventory, making it much easier to budget for laptop refresh cycles.

Power Apps provides the user interfaces and orchestration logic, with more than a dozen apps supporting different roles and processes. Power Automate manages the complex workflows and integration points with HR, IT, and other systems. Pre-built connectors integrate the system with the company’s Workday and ServiceNow systems. All onboarding data is recorded in Dataverse, which makes it easier to set up multiple access points to check this data. There’s an AI agent for administrators, a Power BI dashboard for managers, and connectivity to Eva that managers can also use to check onboarding status. 

Launchpad also leverages other AI capabilities in Power Platform to address specific onboarding challenges. 

For example, to complete a form for hiring multiple employees, managers often copy and paste employee IDs from various third-party applications. The result was inconsistent formatting that required manual corrections. Using AI Builder in Power Automate along with Azure OpenAI, Epiq created a model that cleans up formatting of new employee submission forms and allows for more efficient onboarding at scale.