Experienced e-Discovery Consulting
Even the largest law firms and in-house corporate legal teams usually lack the resources and specialization required to tackle all e-Discovery challenges. A combination of engineering background, computer forensics and e-Discovery expertise, and software development experience gives us a deep understanding of how the e-Discovery process works.
Put our computer forensics and e-Discovery expertise to work for you via our e-Discovery consulting practice. Our invaluable hands-on experience in numerous projects can help you plan for and respond to e-Discovery requests much more effectively while improving quality and reducing unnecessary spending. Some areas where we provide planning and e-Discovery consulting services are:
e-Discovery Readiness
We can work with your team and review important aspects of your organization such as record retention and disposition policies, data maps, discovery manual and legacy systems, and assess whether or not your organization is ready for e-Discovery.
Data Mapping
Knowing the locations of potentially discoverable electronically stored information (ESI) is an essential part of a successful e-Discovery project. We can help you map your organization’s information systems so that you can find and secure crucial electronic evidence.
ESI Preservation and Collection Strategy
Once potential ESI sources are identified, you have several options for preserving and collecting the identified electronic evidence. For example, certain hardware can be preserved by decommissioning, full forensic images or targeted forensic collections can be made, entire servers or individual custodians’ user data can be preserved etc. Our e-Discovery consulting practice can help you understand the differences among various ESI preservation and collection strategies and make the right choices.
Search Term Optimization
We would be happy to lend your legal team our technical expertise to create search queries that will deliver a high percentage of relevant documents and eliminate most of the unrelated data. Through multiple iterations of quality control, sampling and verification, we help you improve how your search query performs.
Search and Culling Strategy
Focusing on documents relevant to your case as quickly as possible helps you cut costs and save time. We help you choose the right combination of search and culling methods such as keyword searches, de-duplication and de-NISTing.
e-Discovery Processing and Review Software Selection
The legal market is overflowing with off-the-shelf e-Discovery software. Participating in industry conferences, watching product demonstrations and evaluating hardware and software tools are part of what we do, and we can help you navigate the marketplace and pick the right tools for the job.
e-Discovery Project Management
Managing e-Discovery projects expertly and making sure they are completed with exceptional quality, on time and within budget is our specialty. While project management is an integral part of our computer forensics and e-Discovery services, we would also be happy to help you manage projects on your end.
Rule 26(f) Conference (Meet and Confer) Preparation
F.R.C.P. Rule 26(f) requires that, among other things, the parties make and arrange for the initial disclosures, discuss any issues about preserving discoverable information and develop a proposed discovery plan. We can help you navigate your meet and confer successfully by preparing for the crucial discussions about where ESI exists, preservation of information, production format, search methodology and more.
ESI Production Review and Compliance Analysis
We prepare ESI productions on a regular basis and have the skills to detect potential problems before it is too late. See our ESI Productions page to learn more about how our e-Discovery consulting can help you with incoming and outgoing ESI productions.
e-Discovery Database Conversions and Migrations
Having to migrate thousands of active and inactive databases from one platform to another (e.g. from AccessData Summation to LexisNexis Concordance® or Relativity®) is a challenging task. Such conversions require expert knowledge of both platforms as well as a workflow that will minimize human error through automation and meticulous quality control.
Similarly, migrating a large number of databases to a different site or different servers (e.g. due to lack of available server capacity) can be tedious and error prone. We are experts in planning and executing large scale database conversions and migrations, and our e-Discovery consulting practice would be thrilled to help you tackle your e-Discovery database conversion or migration.
e-Discovery Department Setup
Looking to bring e-Discovery in-house? As part of our e-Discovery consulting service, we can help you setup your own e-Discovery department from beginning to end. We can guide you through choosing the right hardware and software, physical and network security, enterprise storage and database servers, redundancy, quality control policies and procedures, hiring the right staff and more.