Litigation Support

Estimating the Cost of Review (Simplified Version)

Posted on June 26, 2009
Image via WikipediaOnce you have processed your documents (extraction plus deduplication) and search terms have been applied, you must take at least two things into account when estimating the cost of review:(1) page count(2) file sizeMost everyone asks for file count and I think this is a big mistake (unless you are performing a native file review where page counts are NOT available)...

Damn, it feels good to be a Banker! [video]

Posted on June 19, 2009
This is hilarious! FYI, I've been in consulting for 10 years. The banker-side of the rap is a bit hard to make out, so you'll have to listen to it twice (volume turned up even) to catch all the lyrics.

E-Discovery is Low Tech

Posted on June 13, 2009
A lot of the work we do is low tech in nature. It's funny because the college graduates we hire have been raised in a Web 2.0 world and are shocked to find their time copying & counting files, tying out exceptions, recovering passwords, converting files from one format to another, etc...

Project Managers, Practitioners, and Professionals

Posted on May 28, 2008
As I watch the e-discovery industry mature, I've observed a stratification of individual talents and their relative worth to EDD projects. There are three archetypes: project managers, practitioners, and professionals. A good project team will be staffed with all three...

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Recall and Precision

Posted on April 26, 2008
There's a great law.com article by H. Christopher Boehning and Daniel J. Toal that discusses traditional keyword and Boolean search methods versus new alternative methods. Though the authors don't mention it specifically, their article discusses the theory of "recall" and "precision"...

Only the Company Can Know Itself

Posted on April 17, 2008
In the latest law.com article, Keeping Your Firm's E-Discovery In-House, Dale Buss recognizes that there's strong sentiment in the industry for "legal departments [to] establish as much as possible of the ESI-management function in-house as swiftly as they can [because] only the company over time truly can know itself"...

Trend towards the Proactive

Posted on April 15, 2008
Many in our industry have predicted a trend towards more proactive e-discovery solutions, and I tend to agree. In its most simplest form, this argument means reducing the volume of data and overall costs. Whether this is accomplished through "early case analysis" or better software, the distinguishing feature is where & when one decides to pare the corpus of data for a particular matter...

The Offline Review

Posted on January 16, 2008
Every so often, there's an unavoidable need to export documents out of your review platform for "offline review". This can mean something as simple as printing documents out for an attorney to provide handwritten comments; or it can mean something more complicated like exporting documents to an offline format because your system's native viewer can't render documents containing illegible text, password protection, or foreign language content...

The Media Log

Posted on December 29, 2007
It's also referred to as a tracking spreadsheet or delivery manifest, but the "media log" is one of the most important pieces of paper in your Chain of Custody. If the sending party doesn't provide a media log to accompany a piece of delivered data, don't process the data! If they push back and say, "Can you guys just fill out the log based on what's on the DVD?", don't do it...

Repopulating Dupes

Posted on December 11, 2007
Are you required to repopulate duplicate documents in your production? Be aware that you may be left with unmarked documents. Not every tool propogates reviewer markings to repopulated duplicate documents. Not only that, repopulation may not even work unless the "duplicate owner" custodian is included as part of the production...

Database Mitosis

Posted on November 16, 2007
"Uh, your database is too big. We need to split it."Your organization may have bought into a evidence and discovery management tool because it was advertised as the biggest and fastest database on Earth. Sure, the backend database to these applications (SQL Server, Oracle, etc) may have benchmark statistics proving such claims, but what are the practical limits of the software package itself? A severe limitation is the software code that's overlaid on top of the database technology...

Waivering, To and Fro

Posted on November 08, 2007
Crafting a list of keywords that will retrieve a maximum number of responsive documents on your matter requires planning and knowledge. Skilled practitioners in our field understand that it requires interviews with relevant custodians (to understand organizational lingo), and a firm understanding of the specific search technology that's employed...

Beware of Going Native

Posted on May 12, 2007
No, going native doesn't mean stripping naked and running down the hall at your law office. ALM printed an article called Discovery Savings: Going Native. I honestly don't think Native will save you all that much time or money. In fact, reviewing in TIFF may be faster and is really the only choice if you're adding redactions and/or other endorsements (your vendor may need a couple of days lead time to start the TIFF conversion process before you start your review, however)...

Meta-Four

Posted on April 23, 2007
For all practical intents and purposes, there are four major types of Metadata that we're concerned with in the review, analysis & production phases of the E-Discovery lifecycle:(1) Document Metadata(2) Container Metadata(3) Tagging Metadata(4) Workflow MetadataDocument Metadata - This is the traditional stuff that you're accustomed with when trying to ascertain the Author, Create Date, Modified Date, Last Printed Date, etc...

Chain of Fools

Posted on April 21, 2007
With so many parties involved in the E-Discovery process these days, can anyone claim to have a clear & precise picture on your project's chain-of-custody? Your case is likely to have a different vendor for Evidence Collection, Processing (Culling and Deduping), Text & TIFF, and Review & Production...

I can review faster using Paper

Posted on April 10, 2007
Smugly, the lead attorney on the matter walks in, adjusts the knot on a tie that costs more than my suit and proclaims, "Just print it out for me. I can review faster on Paper". Translation: you silly kids use that computer thing. Whoa! Where do we begin to correct this attitude? Well, I say stand your ground and drop a little knowledge...

I hate my Project Manager!

Posted on April 09, 2007
The legal game is time & quality driven. The stakes are high and mistakes can lead to exorbitant penalties and/or sanctions. At the end of the day, there are a handful of individuals directly responsible for the expediency and quality of the productions: the project manager on the vendor side, and the review coordinator at the law firm...

This is just the beginning. We are going to be buried in data.

Posted on April 08, 2007
Experts estimate that more than 2.4 Billion will be spent by litigators in 2007 on electronic discovery services (reference here). While most of this business involves the indexing and presentation of email and electronic office files, we are going to be expected in the near future to work with software that handles foreign languages, audio, video, cell phone text messages, instant messages and, yes, even blog data...