Articles provided by our strategic partner Superior-Review
KNOW WHEN TO HOLD ‘EM:
THE EFFECTIVE USE OF LITIGATION HOLDS
by William M. Taylor, Esq.
As the use of technology becomes more and more prevalent, professionals in all fields have witnessed a significant increase in the amount of information that is created and stored. This increase in information has led to the development of rules as to how this information, particularly electronically stored information (“ESI”), is to be treated in the context of litigation and regulatory investigations. (Register & Download)
THE EVOLUTION OF LITIGATION SUPPORT
by Jerry Thompson
Technological innovations and the evolution of the litigation support service industry have combined over the last decade to provide many cost-saving tools for managing discovery - both paper and electronic. Tools once restricted by cost and accessibility to only the largest law firms handling the largest cases are now affordable and available to firms of all sizes, for use in even the smallest cases. This article will give you a glimpse of what is out there and show you that the benefits afforded by litigation support technologies are no longer out of reach for your firm or your case.
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TEN COMMON PITFALLS IN eDISCOVERY AND DOCUMENT REVIEW
by William M. Taylor, Esq.
In our everyday world, dangerous situations and potential pitfalls all carry prominent warning signs. We diligently warn others to take caution and be alert in perilous situations and circumstances. In electronic discovery, however, potential disasters are not conveniently marked with ringing alarm bells, flashing signals or brightly-colored signs. In this article we'll explore some of the more common trouble spots that litigation support teams, data managers and Counsel are likely to encounter (Register & Download)
Case Studies
Technical Agility is Key to Diverse Data Conversion Capabilities ---------------------------------
The Issue: Required Data is Locked in Obscure Legacy System
A Fortune 100 company with numerous national and international divisions faced discovery requests involving a legacy help desk system with a proprietary database back-end. The organization’s counsel needed to review some 450 thousand help desk tickets with attachments, but the only export format provided by the legacy system was EBCDIC fixed length files – a format that is completely unreadable on a modern PC. To further complicate matters, the attachments were only loosely linked to the original records, and filenames were lost during the export process.
The Solution: Customized Conversion Tools Create Usable Deliverable
Altep’s technology experts developed custom software to process the fixed length files and output ASCII files with linked attachments in standard document layout. The resulting native documents and attachments were then loaded into a web-based review platform, and counsel was able to examine the materials quickly and easily using normal document review procedures.
The Impact: One-of Tools Become Standard Offering
Subsequently, Altep has integrated variants on the EBCDIC processing toolset into its standard service offering, to the benefit of several other clients. The client for whom the solution was initially developed continues to collect and review help desk tickets via Altep’s processing and hosting services; to date, the collection has grown to more that five million documents.
Truly Effective EDD Requires Innovative Thinking -----------------------------------------------
The Issue: Unusual Culling Parameters Require Unusual Methods
After enjoying a mutually rewarding partnership with Altep for several years, a large law firm approached the Altep EDD team with an unusual project. Although the volume of data was not particularly large – some 77 GB of mixed e-files and e-mail messages with attachments – the client was extremely motivated to cull the dataset as thoroughly as possible, so that only data that was very likely to be responsive would be left to review.
The Solution: Custom Processing and Utilities
In a series of meetings, conference calls and iterative test-runs, Altep worked with the client to develop a culling method that would produce the desired results. To support the process, Altep R&D created a customized software utility that could automate the desired date range searches. The culling criteria involved a three-pronged approach:
a. Use a general set of search terms for “first pass” culling of the entire population.
b. Run a date range search against the entire population, and then cull the result set with a different, more specific set of keywords.
c. Run a second date range search, and cull the results with a third set of keywords.
The process yielded three separate sets of data, which were then de-duplicated and loaded into Inspicio(R), Altep's web-based document review platform.
The Impact: Cost-Saving Approach is Now Available
Altep’s EDD and R&D teams have since expanded the software and methodology employed in this project, and made it available to other clients with similar culling and data management goals. The innovation has afforded Altep’s clients significant cost savings in both processing and review.
Altep Assists with High-Volume, Ongoing Collection and Processing ---------------------------
The Issue: Global Organization Faces Massive Paper Discovery Initiative
With millions of pages of business documents in locations throughout the world, a Fortune 100 organization struggled to develop a document collection and processing program that would allow it to stay ahead of incessant litigation and discovery requests. Since many of the matters were similar in nature and crossed jurisdictional lines, the organization was determined to keep processing costs down by re-purposing collected data as much as possible.
The Solution: Strict Collection and Processing Methodologies Bring Order Out of Chaos
Altep designed and implemented a strict, rigorously documented collection and tracking process to help the organization wrap its arms around the massive backlog of documents. Corporate counsel identified over 600 custodians with potentially relevant materials and then worked with Altep Project Managers to send teams of trained collection experts to sites around the globe. The teams observed incontrovertible protocols that demanded a 48 hour turn around time from collection to re-filing, and a step-by-step audit trail documenting the lifecycle of every document, including before and after photographs of collection sources. During the first 18 months, more than 1.2 million hard copy pages were collected, processed and hosted in secure, web-based document repositories.
The Impact: Ongoing Supplemental Data Collections Become the Core of a Compliant Discovery Philosophy
The collection program was subsequently expanded to include e-files, and is now an integral piece of the organization’s overall ESI management protocol, which also incorporates the document retention policy and vault storage for anticipated litigation. The organization has been able to significantly reduce the burden of cost while responding to discovery requests.
From Collection to Production in One Week ------------------------------------------------------
The Issue: Multi-National Law Firm Faces Short Deadline for Large Production
A large law firm with offices throughout the US and Europe faced an extremely short discovery deadline. Altep had just 2 days to collect more than 1.6 million documents, process, cull and filter using keyword searches and host the data for review. Once the documents were available, attorneys had less than a week to review; thereafter, Altep produced more than 680,000 images to meet the court-ordered deadline.
Data Stats:
Total GBs received: 244
Total docs before culling: ~1,615,000
Total docs hosted: ~102,000
Total GB hosted: 135
More than 8GB of opposing counsel production data was also hosted and reviewed
Production Size: ~47,800 documents (683,000+ images)
Time constraints, coupled with the significant size of the data population, were obviously the big challenge during this project.
The Solution: With Teamwork, Dedication and an Efficient Process, the Impossible Can Be Made Possible
- Altep assigned a dedicated Project Manager, who was physically on-site from the beginning of project in order to oversee the data collection and to provide support to the litigation and review team.
- Rolling deliveries of data from San Antonio to El Paso via Altep courier were arranged in order to maintain chain of custody and ensure the fastest possible turnaround.
- Altep’s EDD processing teams were scheduled in around –the-clock shifts so that data could be processed continually, and any issues were handled right away.
- Database Administrators were on call, and loaded data for native review as soon as it was released.
- To prepare the review teams, Altep offered Inspicio® training sessions via WebEx, five times per day for two consecutive days. More than 160 reviewers were trained to complete the project.
- To save time in generating the production dataset, the Production Team began converting documents marked Responsive and Not Privileged to TIFF on a rolling basis while the review was ongoing.
- Application Support Specialists provided live support via remote access sessions, e-mail and telephone for 48 hours straight.
- The Project Manager provided hourly status reports throughout the review. At the conclusion of the review, Altep couriers hand-delivered the production datasets to outside and opposing counsel in San Antonio and Houston, on external hard drives.
Upon receipt of Opposing Counsels’ production dataset, Altep hosted the data and continued to provide 24 hour support during the client’s review of these materials.
The Impact: Win Win
The client was able to meet the court-ordered deadline, and won the case. Altep is currently assisting with a second, separate matter.
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