An interesting point. The likelihood of JR having less manpower support from her solicitor's office than NC did is quite high, simply because of the number of people that could be paid for and assigned to it, even before you factor in how many hours they worked. MG's firm could for example have taken on paralegals on a temporary basis just to assist with this case, in a way the CLO may not have been able to for cost reasons.
In terms of the 7 year WA chat though, SP's lawyers (and it will most likely have indeed been junior lawyers in MG's firm in the first instance) were motivated to look through in order to defend and mitigate against the messages the other side had. In contrast, NHS Fife were handed the messages on a plate, and LN was not going to willingly hand over others that implicated herself, if indeed she even remembered them.
But SP's side needed to be able to show if they could that (a) that was the only message(s) in the 7 year chat showing potentially discriminatory content by SP and that (b) LN's credibility was compromised by her own lack of professionalism re breaking patient confidentiality. So searching through the entire backlog to see what they could find to mitigate was important, as they were on the back foot.
It's possible that SP told them there weren't any more potentially problematic messages from her and about the message from LN, so the legal team then checked so that they could say that with confidence.