ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY
The changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in December 2006
have made e-discovery an essential part of litigation for both Law Firms and
Corporate Clients alike. In addition, public companies have a requirement under
Sarbanes-Oxley to retain and manage significant volumes of email and other
documents: both paper and electronic. Managing e-Discovery in-house is costly
and requires a significant investment in IT infrastructure and staff.
Even a relatively small case may require the collection of emails and
other electronic documents from several custodians and the processing
and review of tens of thousands of documents.
At LEX On Demand, we recognize that deadlines, budgets and
resource constraints mean that eDiscovery needs to be a fast,
efficient, reliable process, focused on the responsive, with rapid
flows from processing to review to document production.
We always keep our clients in the loop and we track progress
and costs at every stage of the process so there are no surprises.
Our innovative systems architecture allows us to select the best,
most suitable applications for processing and producing your
documents. And because it is highly scaleable, we are able
deploy additional processing power rapidly and on demand based
on the deadline and size of the project.
The LEX On Demand Discovery process includes:
- Discovery Planning & Project Design
- Data PreProcessing & Conversion
- Data Deduplication & Culling
- Document Processing
- Document Production
- Document Analysis
- Online Review
Discovery Planning & Project Design
At the start of every project we assign a litigation industry
experienced Project Manager who will work with you in a consultative
manner on every stage of the process. Your Project Manager will
discuss with you the case and your particular discovery requirements. They will help you decide whether you want to review the documents in native file format or convert to an imaging format. They’ll also inquire about your review needs and choice of review platform.
If you have an in-house solution, they will ask about database and
load file specifications to ensure a seamless transition between
systems. Or they’ll help you identify a review solution that best
meets your needs from the range of online review platforms hosted by
LEX On Demand. Last but not least, they will want to understand your
deadline and budget constraints.
Using this information your Project Manager will create a
Statement of Work (SOW) for your approval and sign-off.
They will also establish a plan to meet your deadline and
deliverable requirements.
Data PreProcessing & Conversion
Data collected for eDiscovery and Review can come in a
multiplicity of formats, generated by a wide variety of applications.
Before processing these documents (i.e. inventorizing, extracting
metadata and text and, if required, producing a TIFF image)
it may be necessary to convert the data into a format that can be
handled by the production systems in use or pre-process the data in
various ways e.g. unpack container files such as RAR or ZIP files.
On receipt of your data, LEX On Demand’s skilled data analysts will
review it and make an assessment and a plan of what, if any, requires
conversion and pre-Processing. At LEX we have available a wide variety
of specialist tools to support data conversion and experienced
developers on-hand to develop any custom routines or scripts
required to preprocess your particular data set.
By analyzing, converting and pre-processing your data right
at the outset, we ensure quick intake and fast document processing
which in turn will provide documents for review at an early stage.
Data Deduplication & Culling
Even quite small eDiscovery projects can produce very large
volumes of data. At LEX On Demand we work with you to identify
appropriate mechanisms for reducing the data set, enabling you to
focus on documents most likely to be responsive and reducing duplication.
At LEX, we make use of the latest technologies for filtering, culling
and deduplication. As well as standard email and edocs metadata,
documents can be filtered by custodian, date, file type and keywords.
We will work with you to devise an effective deduplication strategy
determining how exactly two documents have to match to be designated
duplicates and whether duplication should be done within a custodian
only, or across the universe of data, or by volume.
By culling out identifiably non relevant items at an early stage
and eliminating duplicates, you and your team can focus on a
significantly smaller set of potentially responsive documents.
Document Processing
Once we’ve done an initial intake analysis on your data,
we’ll be able to advise you on your processing options.
Our innovative production architecture is built around the concept
of having separate data processing tracks for different types of data.
This way we can apply the most appropriate processing solution for
your type of data and review and analysis needs.
LEX’s document processing workflow creates a complete inventory of
each document in our central database, uncompressing any zip or
RAR files, unpacking any container files and uniquely identifying
each item and its parent-child relations. During processing
we also extract the metadata and text, storing these for use in
analysis, search and review operations and for future productions.
Document Production
During the Discovery process, there will be a need to produce documents
to the various parties involved in a case including partner firms,
opposing counsel, government agencies etc. Not only must a record be
maintained of what was produced to whom but different recipients may
require different delivery formats.
LEX On Demand can deliver TIFF, PDF or native file productions as required.
If you are hosting and reviewing internally, we will work with you to
determine your load file requirements and produce productions to meet
those specifications. We can produce load files for all common litigation
management applications including: Concordance, Summation, Ringtail,
Introspect, iConect, interLegis and eView.
Electronic productions can be delivered to you on DVD/Hard Drive,
transmitted to you over FTP, or uploaded to your repository or server.
If you need to produce to paper, we can print the selected documents
on high-speed printers in our production centers, ensuring rapid
delivery to your reviewers and attorneys.
Assessment & Analysis
There is a growing recognition among legal professionals that
manually reviewing each and every document collected in a case
is neither feasible nor an efficient use of resources.
Early assessment and analysis of documents can speed the process,
reduce costs and improve results. By analyzing the document
set prior to review, attorneys and their staff can determine
which custodians should be processed and reviewed first,
assess review resources requirements and identify which sets
of documents are most likely to be responsive.
For an early initial assessment of the case, LEX On Demand has quick
intake – fast review tools that allow you to get an overview of the entire set,
identify key concept groups and carry out keyword searches.
We can also provide more complex tools for deeper analysis of
your data including concept mapping, social networking and conversational
flow and in-context analysis.
At LEX On Demand, we believe that early assessment
and analysis is the key to an efficient, cost-effective,
fast review process. Your LEX Project Manager can
advise you on the best choice of tools to meet your assessment and analysis needs.
We can also provide training for you and your staff on how to use
the tools and how to make use of the analyses.
In partnership with you, we can help you to a smarter,
faster, more cost-effective review process.
Document Review
Once electronic documents have been processed and organized,
they can be made available to attorney’s and their staff for review.
Unfortunately even relatively small cases can result in document sets
that run to millions of pages thus making paper review too costly, too
time consuming and too cumbersome. Just as important is the need to
manage the work of the review team: ensuring each reviewer's pipeline
of documents is full, checking reviewer quality and consistency and
monitoring the overall progress of the review.
At LEX On Demand, our LEX Vault online hosting service provides
easy-to-use, secure, access to your documents together with all
the features you’d expect from a leading review tool including:
advanced search functions, the ability to view file types without
the native application, workflow assignment and review metrics
reports. Using a secured user and password ID, review teams can
collaborate not only on the same floor but around the world,
saving significant time and money.
CLICK HERE for more information about
LEX On Demand's online review solutions.