What Is Litigation Support?

What it is, who it’s for, and why it matters in legal tech today.

At a Glance

Litigation support refers to tools and platforms that help law firms and legal departments manage the logistical, procedural, and evidentiary components of litigation. These solutions serve litigators, paralegals, legal ops teams, and trial consultants by streamlining matter preparation, courtroom presentation, expert coordination, and case-related documentation. As litigation becomes more data-driven and time-sensitive, litigation support has become essential for managing complexity, reducing manual effort, and enabling legal teams to operate with greater precision and efficiency across the full matter lifecycle.

What Litigation Support Is and Who It’s For

Litigation support is the category of tools, platforms, and services that assist legal teams in preparing, managing, and presenting cases throughout the litigation lifecycle. This includes everything from matter intake and discovery coordination to trial graphics, demonstrative evidence, and post-trial analysis. The most common users are law firms — especially those involved in civil litigation or complex disputes — but users also include in-house counsel, litigation support professionals, and external service providers.

These tools help streamline critical but time-intensive workflows: organizing documents and depositions, coordinating expert witnesses, preparing evidence for court, and tracking deadlines or case milestones. Many also include collaboration tools for attorneys, paralegals, and consultants working across distributed teams. While litigation support has long included outsourced services and desktop software, modern platforms increasingly offer cloud-based capabilities and integrations with other legal systems. This category continues to evolve as litigation becomes more digital, distributed, and data-driven.

Core Solutions

Litigation support tools help legal teams manage complex, detail-heavy processes before, during, and after trial. These solutions often complement broader practice management systems or eDiscovery platforms, but focus specifically on supporting litigation workflows.

Core functions typically include:

• Case and matter preparation: Document indexing, fact chronology, exhibit tracking, and logistical aspects of witness preparation

• Deposition and transcript management: Annotation, video syncing, and real-time transcription tools

• Trial presentation: Slide creation, digital exhibit handling, and visual storytelling platforms

• Evidence analysis: Chain-of-custody tools, metadata management, and forensic validation

• Expert coordination: Vendor marketplaces, background vetting, and project tracking for consultants or expert witnesses

Many platforms also offer calendaring, deadline tracking, and team collaboration features to support litigation teams operating under pressure. These tools are especially valuable in high-stakes cases with voluminous data, multiple parties, and tight timelines.

How Litigation Support Solutions Compare

Litigation support solutions vary widely in scope, specialization, and delivery model. Some offer full lifecycle support, from intake to post-trial analysis, while others focus on specific phases such as expert coordination, demonstratives, or trial presentation. The market spans enterprise-grade platforms with extensive customization to narrow tools optimized for high-volume case support.

Key variables include the depth of service (full-service vs. self-serve), integration with practice management or eDiscovery tools, pricing structure (project-based, subscription, or usage-based), and support model (tech platform vs. managed services). Some tools primarily serve in-house legal teams, while others serve litigation support professionals or third-party providers working alongside outside counsel. As legal teams seek more flexible, tech-enabled litigation infrastructure, the boundaries between traditional service providers and software platforms continue to blur.

Challenges and Considerations

Litigation support buyers face a number of challenges, particularly around alignment, integration, and vendor oversight. The most common issue is fragmentation: legal teams may rely on separate providers for evidence prep, demonstratives, trial tech, and expert sourcing, leading to duplicated effort or last-minute confusion. Case timelines can also be unpredictable, which makes scheduling, coordination, and budgeting difficult — especially when relying on outside partners.

Some platforms offer strong tools but weak support, while others rely heavily on services with limited tech enablement. Integration with other systems (e.g., LPMS (law practice management software), eDiscovery, calendaring tools) can help, but is often underutilized or unavailable. And while AI is beginning to touch areas including transcript analysis and brief drafting, most litigation support work is still human-intensive and requires tight coordination, context-awareness, and deep trust between legal teams and their partners.

How AI and Automation Are Changing Litigation Support

AI and automation are transforming nearly every phase of the litigation support process, from early case intake to trial preparation. AI tools now assist with document analysis, deposition transcript summarization, and even witness preparation by highlighting inconsistencies or patterns in testimony. Some platforms use predictive modeling to flag high-risk cases or suggest optimal strategies based on past outcomes.

Automation is also accelerating the creation of demonstratives, exhibit management, and evidence timelines, freeing legal teams from hours of manual formatting and coordination. In trial presentation tools, smart tagging and content recommendation are beginning to surface key visuals or exhibits based on context. What’s emerging is a shift from static case management to dynamic litigation orchestration, where AI acts not just as a filter or speed enhancer, but as a strategic partner in shaping legal arguments and surfacing what matters most.

Future Trends

Going forward, litigation support is likely to see deeper integration with upstream and downstream systems, from matter intake and case budgeting to post-trial knowledge management. Platforms that support seamless handoffs between teams and tools will become more valuable, especially for firms managing large caseloads or distributed trial teams. Expect greater convergence between litigation support and broader legal operations platforms, as buyers look for unified dashboards and end-to-end visibility. Integration with virtual hearing and remote deposition platforms may become more standardized, and automation of evidence presentation and trial scheduling could see wider adoption. As litigation grows ever more complex and high-stakes, the demand for analytics, modular tooling, and interoperability will only accelerate.

Leading Vendors

The litigation support landscape is highly fragmented, with solutions ranging from all-in-one case management suites to highly specialized providers focused on visual storytelling or expert witness logistics. While some platforms aim to orchestrate the entire litigation lifecycle, others are narrowly focused on high-impact jobs such as timeline creation, remote depositions, or in-court presentation. The categories below reflect how buyers tend to evaluate these tools: by how they map to key stages in the litigation process, and the level of service or specialization they offer. The list isn’t exhaustive, but it includes many of the most widely adopted or differentiated providers across US litigation practices.