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.