Category: eDiscovery Attorneys

Relativity Fest Roundup: Data Management Strategies, Innovation Award Lightning Round Session, and More!

The Acorn team was delighted to join everyone at this year’s Relativity Fest in-person to reconnect and stay informed of the latest developments and innovations in the industry and RelativityOne.  

With informative sessions covering everything from managing and protecting modern data, navigating data privacy risks in the current digital landscape, and using RelativityOne integrations to solve these challenges, this year’s event was filled with pertinent information regarding the current state of the industry and its dynamic changes to come.  

1. FTI-Relativity General Counsel Report 

Ari Kaplan, Principal, Ari Kaplan Advisors 
David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel & Legal Education Director, Relativity 
Wendy King, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting 
Celia Perez, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, FreightCar America 

Ari Kaplan discussed that data protection and privacy were the top two concerns of legal risks for business today due to remote work, changes in technology, GDPR requirements, data breaches, and ransomware attacks. Regulatory compliance was also listed as a major concern, “There is a lot of uncertainty since there are so many different avenues in which the regulations can change in fundamental ways, and I think this is amplified from administration changeovers when you have different focuses from presidential administration which impacts the way the FDA will inspect. Overall, this affects the thread of class action litigation which is tied to regulatory lapses based on false advertising or failure to disclose” Kaplan observed. 

The report found that legal departments are also being greatly impacted by demands in capacity, resources, and budgets, as many law departments mentioned experiencing some level of strain surrounding growth, talent retention, and inability to hire talent with specialized skillsets. It came as no surprise that 67% of respondents are considering the role of AI to alleviate these capacity demands. With greater concern surrounding data privacy, using high-powered technology and AI can help to relieve the burden on legal teams who are experiencing strains on capacity and resources.  

From our point of view, the growing concerns regarding data privacy risks as well as the current lack of eDiscovery talent and expertise all point to a need for corporate teams to more pro-actively partner with providers to manage their data.  

2. How Modern Corporations Should Approach Owning Their Data

Michallynn Demiter, eDiscovery Expert, Bayer 
Rishi Chhatwal, Director & Associate General Counsel, Coinbase 
Kristin Sunderman, Litigation Support Director, Freddie Mac 
Eduardo Martinez Jr., Senior Counsel, Litigation & Investigations, UPS 
Charles McCloughan, Sales Engineer, Relativity 

This session revealed that data volumes are expected to experience significant growth in the next three years. eDiscovery teams can ensure their data is being managed appropriately by completing a full assessment to determine where data is located. Speakers also mentioned the importance of limiting the amount of data that leaves your company, minimizing data transfers, and creating data retention policies for each platform in your organization.  

Migrating data into RelativityOne can be an effective solution for data management. Rishi Chhatwal, Director & Associate General Counsel at Coinbase discussed how “technology allows us to consolidate our data. If you pick the right partner for your solution, you can consolidate where your data lives, and how much it costs to host it, which creates lasting efficiencies to pull, collect, search, and view that data.” 

As we continue to see the increasing need for data management strategies, this session furthered our view that utilizing highly secure technology can be beneficial for keeping data safe. 

3. What to Expect in the New Frontier of Corporate e-Discovery

Jason Pickens, VP Cybersecurity, JP Morgan Chase & Co 
Henry Link, Associate General Counsel – eDiscovery & Information Governance, Meta Platforms 
Andrew Watts, Chief Customer Officer, Relativity 
Nirav Shah, eDiscovery Manager, The Home Depot 
Mrs. Jessica Abud, Manager, Legal Operations, Kyndryl 

In this session, corporate speakers emphasized the common challenge of collecting and preserving new data types that have emerged in recent years. Collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams have posed many challenges, as Henry Link at Meta discussed, “There is no longer just a communication tool where you can collect linear ESI. The sad thing with Teams and these modern communication platforms is that you can go back and reply to previous messages, which can lead to issues with discovery.” 

As modern data becomes more of an interconnected web between different platforms, legal departments are working with eDiscovery partners to understand the scope of these new challenges. Completing discovery for new collaboration software often requires more attention to content sentiment, context, and collection of less structured data. Utilizing AI can solve some of these challenges but can also pose issues around bias and missing the nuances of human thought and communication. 

With these upcoming challenges in mind for the future of eDiscovery, our project managers continue to use RelativityOne’s integrations with collaboration platforms to gain an accurate representation of the data collected.  

4. Lightning Round: Innovation Award Tech Finalists

Not only did we have a chance to learn more about how to effectively use Relativity technology at Relativity Fest, we were also proud to be nominated in both the Customer Experience and Solution Provider categories of the Innovation Awards this year. Our Director of eDiscovery Tracey Oldenburg presented in the Innovation Award Lightning Round Session with information about Acorn’s eDiscovery BackOffice™ Mass Export Natives application. 

We were eager to share our app development within RelativityOne, as well as stay informed of the continual enhancements to RelativityOne technology at this year’s event. Despite the exciting changes and advancements regarding eDiscovery data and technology, we found that law firms and corporations are aware that these developments can also come with risks. This year’s Relativity Fest was an important opportunity for our team to better understand the eDiscovery concerns our clients currently face, and to learn how RelativityOne is working to combat security risks and provide safe data management options.  

We are grateful that the information from this year’s Relativity Fest will help us to be a better guide for our clients as we take on the challenges of the dynamic eDiscovery landscape. 

About Acorn

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

Seeing Triple: How 3 Culprits Complicate Deduplication

Over the past years we’ve heard increasing complaints from clients of a lot of duplicates in their hosting and review databases. When we look into the matter further, these “duplicates,” although substantively the same content, are not exact copies of each other from an evidentiary perspective. For example, migrating email to an archiving system might cause slight changes to the formatting of the header that results in the emails not being viewed as duplicates by the processing platform. 

We are seeing an increasing need for defensible, technology-based deduplication beyond just MD5 hashing. The industry standard is to use MD5 hash to identify any duplicates of a document that has been processed and suppressing them, saving clients the time, money, and headache of reviewing duplicative data.

As a first step, clients use solutions provided by RelativityOne such as the Processing Duplication Workflow application. Within this application, users can identify primary and duplicate documents, all custodians, and all source files for documents. It also provides capabilities to identify unique, primary and duplicate files based on a relational field.  

This worked fairly well for a long time, but as email and archive systems have continued to evolve, the MD5 hash is no longer as effective at identifying duplicates as it once was. I want to lay out some of the business practices that are causing challenges with the MD5 hashing strategy for deduplication and propose that we start using Message-ID in addition to metadata as a supplement to deduplication. 

Culprit 1: URL Rewriting 

We’ve all seen the typical phishing email. It is usually formatted in a non-standard way, or requesting an invoice or documents we’ve never heard of, or from a person we know wouldn’t be sending or requesting this information. Those are the obvious ones.  Every year we see them, all slightly different but always evolving to appear authentic. Phishing scams typically go about disguising hyperlinks to appear authentic on the surface but will send users to a malicious site. One way to bypass this bait and switch is to hover over the hyperlink, and see if you are being directed to the location you should be. One example I have seen is an email or text from my bank that is asking me if I authorized a charge and includes a link to log in and approve that charge, however when I look at the link it wants me to click it has nothing to do with my bank. 

A security feature you may not even be aware of that is working hard in the background is URL rewriting. IT security professionals created this as a mechanism to catch these attacks before users can click on the malicious link. When an email is received, URLs are rewritten in the body of the email. When a user clicks the link, it passes through a service where it is analyzed for security before sending the user to the original link location. If the link is determined to be bad, the site is blocked. While this is an excellent technology to thwart malicious attacks, URL rewriting can create unique hyperlinks in each email copy making them unique when hashing.  

Culprit 2: External Email Warnings 

Another feature used to protect against phishing emails is the use of external email warnings. Attackers will emulate an email to look like it is coming from a trusted associate or organization. By putting a warning at the top of the email that it was received by an external source, readers can be aware that the email did not originate from inside the organization before clicking any links. This external warning message will also make an email unique when hashing. The MD5 hash takes into account the body and header of an email during processing, the system is going to think that this email is now a unique document even if the only difference between that email and the sender’s email is “External” at the top of the email. Not to say you shouldn’t implement these policies, but many companies have instituted this policy wholesale and may not have thought about the discovery implications on cost to review and size to host, never mind the frustration of having to review multiple copies of the same document.  

Culprit 3: Emails Rebranded  

In addition to phishing, email marketing strategies are another culprit of email duplicates. A prominent marketing innovation companies have started using is centralized signature management. This allows a company to customize signatures for marketing campaigns by adding or omitting information, promotions, content, etc. from a centralized third-party platform. These signatures are not integrated directly into the users email account but are applied when the email is sent. The sender’s copy doesn’t have the signature, but a recipient’s email copy does, even within the same organization. This creates unique copies of an email just due to the signature block being different between the two versions even though ostensibly this is the exact same document. Consider how this might affect your electronic discovery obligations and timelines if you must review multiple copies of the same document. It can quickly become an exponentially growing headache for companies.  

What Can We Do About It? 

Acorn has been working behind the scenes to support our clients in the never-ending duplication struggle. We have developed custom proprietary tools to analyze email data and identify duplicates within RelativityOne using a combination of the Message-ID and additional metadata fields. Message-ID is a property added to outgoing emails by the sending mail system. It is retained in the recipient’s copy of the email as well.  It isn’t always unique and it isn’t always populated which is why it shouldn’t be the only method of deduplication. This property in association with other metadata can identify duplicative emails. In one project alone, we were able to reduce the review population by 15%. This translated into roughly a savings of $40,000 by reducing the number of documents to review. 

I’m not here to argue the efficacy of using the Message-ID and metadata for deduplication purposes, I will leave that to the attorneys. What I can verify is the increasing number of duplicates in email collections that need to be managed. 

About Acorn

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

5 Tips for Selecting an eDiscovery Partner

eDiscovery is an essential component of litigation, but this phase of discovery has become increasingly complicated as the amount of electronic data and data sources continues to skyrocket in growth year over year. Often, firms may not have the bandwidth or the expertise to handle eDiscovery in-house. Due to these factors, eDiscovery partners have become very common and can be relied upon to handle the large amounts of data needed for litigation.

eDiscovery partners can provide crucial support through the different phases of the discovery process, starting at collection through review, production, and case completion. An eDiscovery partner will also be able to assist you at the beginning of the matter to develop a targeted strategy and workflow with defined goals and budget. This creates not only a seamless, defined, and understood process allowing your case team to work collaboratively with your eDiscovery partner.

It may be overwhelming to choose between an eDiscovery partner out of the many options available today, and there are a few important metrics to take into account when evaluating and deciding on which partner works best for you. The choice of an eDiscovery partner can have a significant impact on the success (and cost) of your case, so it is essential to hire someone you can trust, particularly since you are dealing with sensitive client data.

1) Level of Customer Support

eDiscovery isn’t always simple and clear-cut, which is why it’s necessary to work with a Project Manager who provides dedicated support from the beginning to the end of your case. When looking for an eDiscovery partner, find out whether you will have a direct and consistent point of contact throughout your case. Does the partner pride themselves on being customer-focused? Do they not only provide technical eDiscovery services but also provide insights and consulting?

The technical experience of a project manager is just one piece of finding the right eDiscovery partner. Ensure that you will be working with a dedicated project manager who is available to you and understands the overarching goals of the case and works in collaboration with your team to develop the most efficient and cost-effective workflows for each matter.

2) Capabilities & Expertise

There is a tremendous level of experience required to understand complex eDiscovery software and workflows. When you are searching for an eDiscovery partner, check the years of experience the current project managers on the team possess. Do they have the technical acumen required to successfully handle all the phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM)? Has the team attained certifications as an expert or master in their current technology platform and do they hold related eDiscovery certifications? For example, if the provider uses RelativityOne, are their project managers Relativity Experts or Relativity Masters?

The technical knowledge of a project manager will likely determine the quality of work with a chosen eDiscovery partner. Not only should your eDiscovery partner have the technical capabilities to complete the phases of eDiscovery, but it’s also important they have the expertise to produce superior outcomes for your case.

3) Service Offerings

Before choosing an eDiscovery partner, you must determine their scope of services and if the services they offer meet your needs. Whether you require assistance with litigation support, consulting, collection, hosting, review, production, or managed review, doing some research into the partner’s service lines is a simple and quick step to ensure the partner has an understanding of your needs and can successfully execute a plan.

4) Technology Offerings

Now that you have determined whether an eDiscovery partner is both capable in the field and provides the services you need, it is imperative to understand the technology they offer. With cyber-attacks becoming increasingly common and the expansion of data privacy laws, data security concerns are at the forefront of many firms’ and corporations’ minds. Evaluating partners and their technology solutions to meet or exceed industry security standards is essential. 

Once you understand the technology the company uses, determine whether it is reliable, secure, and exceeds industry standards.

5) Agile and Scalable

Your project manager should be closely involved in your case so that if your case grows, they can adjust your workflow accordingly. For example, Acorn developed our Small Case Solution for this exact reason. In RelativityOne we created a solution that is designed for cases with small data volumes. Our Small Case Solution allows our clients to have a fixed price for cases that are on the smaller side.

Using the Small Case Solution has allowed our clients to have a very cost-effective option to preemptively evaluate and work on their cases. If the case increases in scope, all of that initial work product is retained and we can easily scale to a larger case without any loss of work product. A case’s scope can abruptly change and there really isn’t a “one size fits all” scenario. It’s important to ensure your eDiscovery partner has solutions customized to your specific case needs.

Find the Right Partner for You

Since eDiscovery is such an important aspect of litigation, taking the time to evaluate potential eDiscovery partners can ensure that your unique needs are met and successful outcomes achieved. Determining the capabilities of the software and services and the level of expertise of your potential eDiscovery partner can start you off on the right foot toward a successful resolution of your cases. Clearly articulating your goals, expectations, and the services you need will help you find an eDiscovery partner that is the right fit.

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About Acorn

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

Is It Ethical to Gain a Profit from eDiscovery?

You have a case involving a number of documents that will likely be too time-consuming for your in-house team to manually collect. You find yourself in a situation where you need the assistance of an eDiscovery vendor, but you may be concerned about the costs involved. Even though eDiscovery is often an essential part of litigation, many firms cite budget concerns as one of the major challenges within the industry. The good news is that there are ways to recover costs associated with eDiscovery by viewing them from a business perspective and understanding how to effectively manage them.

Is It Appropriate to Generate a Profit from eDiscovery?

While it may be common to recover eDiscovery costs, you may be wondering whether it is ethical to generate a profit from these services. The best way to view this is by understanding that eDiscovery usage is a business decision, not an ethical decision. It is appropriate to bill clients for this work so long as firms develop a reasonable cost recovery approach and communicate it to the client in advance or within a reasonable time of beginning representation.

eDiscovery services are likely benefitting your client in collecting the facts for their case, and you are incurring these costs for the sole purpose of most effectively representing them. Adding on eDiscovery services to your litigation isn’t a cash grab from your clients, it is a method for significantly improving the outcome of their case. In fact, you may even find that you are able to add on an extra fee for eDiscovery services so long as the costs meet the reasonableness standard and are transparently communicated to the client. Keep in mind, this is only applicable if the work and skills required are comparable to the costs that are being charged.

How Firms Can Effectively Recover eDiscovery Costs

There are many costs associated with running a business, and as a law firm, eDiscovery services are likely always going to be part of these expenses. Whether you decide to add an extra charge for these services, or simply want to recover the costs, the most important factor is the need to be transparent as you present them to your client.

There are a few different ways that you can present these costs, depending on the number and types of cases that your firm manages. For example, you may bill these services based on the volume of cases, volume of data, or the amount of users for your services. It is up to your team to determine the best way to define the costs associated with your services, but typically eDiscovery vendors provide pricing that assists with making these strategic decisions.

Billing Made Easy

As you begin working with an eDiscovery vendor, they will be able to provide you detailed, line by line pricing associated with the amount of data you are collecting. When you communicate these costs to clients, it is crucial to outline them as clearly as possible, as well as explaining how these services support them in their matter. If you are to apply a surcharge for the time and effort associated with these services, be sure to explain your reasoning and inform your client of the complexity of these services.

You want to ensure the trust of your clients while making effective business decisions for your firm. By being transparent with your pricing, you not only can provide effective representation, but also create a successful partnership between your firm, your clients, and your eDiscovery vendor.

Be Sure to Subscribe For the Latest Acorn Insights!

About Acorn

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

Sizing Up Software at LegalTech – Thoughts and Considerations

As we face the end of mask mandates and a return to “business as the new normal”, the legal tech industry is kicking off its return at Legal Week in New York. This presents great networking opportunities, and a chance to catch up on what the technology companies have been doing under the radar these last few years while we’ve all been locked away at home. 

There have been big changes in the technology space in regard to the “Product.” This year’s Legal Week presents one of the few opportunities where I can see 2 years of progress in a demo versus 2 months since the last trade show. 

The few products I am most excited to see: 

  • Relativity has ramped up their cloud-based solution RelativityOne and gained a lot of momentum around their TRACE product. Their deployment of automated, scalable redactions with their Redact product is probably the most visible advancement during the COVID time period. Second to that is a heavy focus on integration with other cloud-based sources of data with their Verqu acquisition.  
  • Reveal / Brainspace / StoryEngine have all merged. StoryEngine and Brainspace are by far the best AI powered ECA products on the market. This functionality provides tremendous value to customers. Acorn has always been a fan of StoryEngine, and on average, for the cases we have that use StoryEngine there is a reduction in Total Cost of Review of 83%. Integration with Relativity has always been an important part of this process for us and I am keen to see if StoryEngine continues to support that tech stack with their stand-alone product, or if they choose to focus on integrating all the AI into their Reveal review.  
  • Disco’s review platform has always had a leg-up in terms of simplicity and ease-of-use. For individual attorneys running the entire eDiscovery process on their own, it makes a lot of sense. I’m not sold, yet, that it’s as useful for workspace administrators looking to support ultimate flexibility and customization in their work. But Disco is pursuing a channel strategy in earnest now, and I am very interested in seeing how that strategy plays out in the market. 
  • iConect is a product that I’ve always loved. It’s a halfway point between Disco and Relativity. It offers a lot of Relativity’s flexibility, and a lot of Disco’s ease of use and simplicity. They took on new investors ~3 years ago, and I bet they have made a lot of progress in terms of product advancement. I’ll be curious to see and hear about it. This is a bit of a dark horse for me going into Legal Week. 
  • Merlin Search Technologies (a.k.a. The Return Of The Johns – Pappas and Tredennick) is the biggest wildcard for me. This team pioneered Continuous Active Learning / TAR 2.0 in the industry and the original team is largely reunited with a new goal in mind. Based on a quick review of their website, I don’t fully understand their differentiation from other tools. However, with this group of folks, I trust it’s there and am excited to hear about it. 

While I’m looking forward to seeing all the new bells, whistles, and features during my in-person software demos, I’ve learned to start focusing on the “Whole Product” instead of just the “Product.” 

“Whole Product” was a concept developed by a Harvard Business School professor, Ted Levitt, and best understood via example. Let’s use a car as an example. If you buy a car that has the features that you want, but it doesn’t have some of the other critical components of your ownership experience, like a nearby service center, an adequate warranty, availability of parts, etc. then you won’t be happy. The Whole Product is the entire experience, and not just the features of the Product. (See here for an article that explains it a bit more in depth) 

Similarly in eDiscovery and Legal Tech, the Whole Product matters. While the demos will show me the Product, the networking will get me more insight into the Whole Product. Here are the questions I plan on asking about each of the aforementioned technologies: 

Considerations for Whole Product in eDiscovery / Legal Tech Space: 

  • How easy is it to find in-house or out-sourced talent that can support this product / software? 

As a services provider thinking about my “Whole Service” it is hard enough to find professionals with the breadth of skills we look for: education orientation, passion about using technology to drive value, communication skills, client orientation, ability to manage complex projects, etc. I don’t want to limit my pool of candidates further by only looking for people with niche technology skills. I also don’t want to slow down my staff onboarding by requiring my new team members to undergo more training in a new technology. For me, this is a big one where Relativity comes out ahead – and I think is a reason they have been a dominant player in the market. 

  • Support with upgrades, or tech issues 

Although software is a platform, the world of tech gets complicated fast. Does that software work on various browsers, with various versions of that browser, on various types of devices, with various operating systems? Ensuring the Product functions in all those circumstances becomes a geometrically complicated problem. I want my team focused on creating value for clients, not distracted with tech troubleshooting. So, good processes, investments, and expertise from my vendors in this area is key to my Whole Product experience. Alternatively, a software provider who can be very specific and focused on the tech stacks they are designed support also garners my trust. 

  • Access to educational materials on how to get the most out of the Product 

eDiscovery is a devil-is-in-the-details industry. Having good documentation around how the features are configured and the logic around those configurations is key to our services. If we can’t explain to a client why a filter in one software platform generates different results for the same document set than a seemingly duplicate filter in a second software platform, we have a lot of trouble using the software. This is crucial documentation for defensibility considerations. All software providers say they have documentation, support, and access to their experts. However, most run out of bandwidth before we run out of questions.  

  • Security operations, and transparency responsiveness around evolving data security / data breach environment 

Data security is at the forefront of both our industry and the world. There have been several key breaches and vulnerabilities discovered.  The old industry standby of “our data is secure, trust us” doesn’t hold as much water as it used to. I’m not a data security expert, so this is a hard one for me to evaluate. I do generally look for robust processes, contractual commitments to transparency, and dedicated security professionals with both in-industry and outside-the-industry experience to get comfortable when considering a new product in our portfolio. I also rely on a roster of blue-chip clients in financial services to get me comfortable that the data security operations are up to snuff. 

  • Integration with the rest of your tech stack. Integration with the operations / tech stack / talent of the organizations that you need to coordinate / collaborate with 

So, this is another Harvard Business School idea, pioneered by Thales Teixeira. About Decoupling. In short, a lot of technology companies try to force you to use all their modules through coercive technology tactics. Instead, I look for products and companies that support the concept of decoupling. They allow me to choose the tech stack that works for me, my organization, my clients, and my partners – even if it means picking and choosing modules between software companies that are traditionally viewed as competitors. Ultimately, that’s good for everyone because it allows the most value creation in the marketplace. 

Conclusion:

There’s a lot of expertise, hard work, and good intentions in the eDiscovery industry.  Yet there’s still a lot of frustration at clients, at service providers, and at technology firms. The work we do is cross-functional, intellectually challenging, and performed in a high-uptime, contentious, fluid environment. That, in and of itself, makes it hard for everyone to walk out of a project with a good experience. However, understanding and focusing on the Whole Product of eDiscovery technology at the outset of an engagement gives everyone more of a fighting chance at success. Without it, the headwinds are even stronger. 

I refuse to accept the old industry refrain of “all eDiscovery providers suck, but at least we know how ours sucks and ours sucks less than any of the other ones out there.” There is a path to plan and resource our way to success on projects in this industry. And we can learn from other industries. 

I look forward to seeing you all there, and jumping back into the pool of great people, great solutions and great parties at Legal Tech! 

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About Acorn 

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com. 

Groundhog Day 2022 | Bridging the Gap: Addressing the Need for eDiscovery Staff with Technical Expertise

Acorn’s CEO, Lia Majid, was joined by Miller Johnson’s Director of Information Technology, Joseph Anderson, for this year’s Groundhog Day webinar to discuss the growing need for eDiscovery personnel with technical expertise.

The discussion expanded on how the lack of eDiscovery personnel, along with the increased need for eDiscovery services, has produced significant industry challenges in recent years. When it comes to managing eDiscovery in-house, there is often a lack of personnel whose main function is eDiscovery. As Joseph notes, “We had an eDiscovery practice that consisted of one project manager working on one case professionally, and then we had a handful of paralegals who were working in Relativity and working with the discovery. But not doing it as their main function and goal…that’s not scalable. If you get one big case, then all that time is taken away and there’s no way to expand eDiscovery within the firm.”

Joseph identified a need for strategically leveraging a partnership with an eDiscovery vendor to accelerate and expand eDiscovery in their firm. They initially didn’t have an established process for dealing with vendors and a structured way to put together the documentation and pull in all the relevant information. As Joseph mentions, “There was this idea that we have to get it into Relativity, we have to do the searches, oops we did something wrong. Okay dump everything out and let’s put it back in.” But through their partnership, they were able to establish a standardized process for each case. Now when there is a new case, they move through their standardized process and identify what needs to be produced before putting it into Relativity, avoiding unnecessary rework. With this increased efficiency, their team’s bandwidth was opened and provided more room for scalability.

A large contributor to these standardized processes involved designing a model to their firm’s case needs, especially for smaller cases. Partnering together, we developed a Small Case Solution, allowing them to leverage Relativity for small matters for a flat fee. Utilizing Acorn’s Small Case Solutions, Joseph’s team created a model where they can bring smaller cases into the RelativityOne software and spread this service to other practices within their firm that typically hadn’t leveraged eDiscovery tools. Joseph mentions, “If you told me that General Counsel would use it for a general investigation, or a Real Estate Partner would be using eDiscovery and that we would have 25-30 cases up from 4, I would have thought no way.” Through their partnership, they now can spread eDiscovery across the firm, and offer the right tools at the right time and place.

By using a standardized workflow with a self-service approach, Joseph’s firm was able to take on more work without needing to hire any new eDiscovery talent. With the current landscape of eDiscovery staffing shortages, it is often not feasible for firms to hire a new paralegal each time new cases arise. Investing in talent also presents cost challenges as Joseph notes, “When we brought an individual on, it was only 20 hours a week and we had the ability to scale up. But if we didn’t need 20 hours, we were still paying for it.” Workloads are constantly fluctuating, but with a strategic partnership to help with the ups and downtime in terms of work within the space, they can scale accordingly.

Despite the challenges surrounding access to individuals in the industry with technical expertise, leveraging a strategic partnership allows you to bridge the gap. Working closely with a partner not only offers access to high eDiscovery expertise but helps you create standardized processes, models tailored to your firm’s needs, and leverage powerful tools at the right moments to truly scale and expand your eDiscovery practice. Transforming eDiscovery into a tool can help leverage across more practices and expand your firm’s efficiency and caseload.

View the full 2022 Groundhog Day session here.   

The Benefits of Early Case Assessment in eDiscovery

You may already know that there are alternatives to the “classic” eDiscovery process. One of these alternatives is an Early Case Assessment (ECA). An ECA can be an extremely beneficial first step, allowing you to quickly identify key information and potential evidence at the onset of a legal matter, which can be leveraged to guide case strategy.

With an initial deeper understanding of the data, we can make reasonable considerations of the case’s liability and projected costs and consider if this case is worth going to trial or if a settlement is an appropriate option. Not only can this approach help guide your initial case strategy but is a cost-effective option leading up to Discovery, allowing us to refine our scope and define and refine our key custodians, key words, etc.  

What Is Early Case Assessment?

There’s no doubt that the early phases of Discovery are the most critical. By using an ECA workflow in the initial phases of Discovery, you can refine vast volumes of data and extract the key facts of your case immediately for review before committing to hosting your entire dataset and the associated costs that come along with that. By refining and analyzing your dataset, we can make reasonable, cost-effective considerations of the case’s liability and projected costs and consider if this case is worth going to trial or if a settlement is an appropriate option. Costs can be significantly reduced by analyzing a smaller subset of data initially, rather than going through an entire collection of all your data only to find out that you don’t need to go to trial. 

If you do however decide to go to trial and move to formal Discovery, the work product from your ECA has already helped you refine your data set, with key custodians, key words and documents initially defined. Your data will be easier to work throughout the case since you will have already limited the number of documents that need to be reviewed. You can now also make more informed decisions from the meet-and-confer through the life of the case, keeping your scope defined and costs contained.

Early Case Assessment with RelativityOne

RelativityOne provides a simple Early Case Assessment option, allowing you to access your data in the same workspace interface you’re familiar with but at significantly reduced cost and a few limitations.

Initial stages of an Early Case Assessment in RelativityOne may include:

  • Gathering Information

  • Analyzing key words and evaluating your data

  • Searching data that may be potentially relevant

  • Refining data to be promoted for review

  • Presenting your findings to outside counsel

  • Building your eDiscovery budget and timeline

RelativityOne’s ECA workflow integrates seamlessly through your eDiscovery, allowing you to scale up and down as needed with RelativityOne’s suite of tools with collection, processing, review, and production capabilities. This allows you to facilitate the whole process all in one platform, keeping your data and work product centralized throughout the life of the case.

Is Early Case Assessment Right for You?

When considering an ECA workflow, it’s important to determine what your goals, timelines and budget are and what questions are you looking to answer. Some considerations may be: What deadlines has the court put upon us? Is this something we can manage in house or need to pull in an outside vendor? What is the liability? What are the costs going to be? How much of this data is relevant to the merits of the litigation?

One of the major benefits that you may find from using an ECA tool is that you are able to calculate risk prior to putting documents through a review platform. Nowadays, there is more online data than ever, and it can be difficult and time-consuming to cull down documents on your own without a tool to help you. The advantage of using an ECA tool is that you can eliminate non-relevant data and focus on the facts to determine the potential route and outcome of your case. ECA can be a more cost-effective way to start your discovery at significantly reduced cost, using a reduced amount of data to gain insights into the direction of your case.

Considering using an ECA workflow in your next case? Contact one of our expert Project Advisors for a free consultation!

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About Acorn

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

Why Is eDiscovery So Expensive?

There is still a common misconception that eDiscovery is expensive. Even though eDiscovery can save you money long term, people are still hesitant to invest in these services. You or the IT department may try to complete discovery requests on their own, and this can be a viable solution but not always. However, eDiscovery professionals are equipped with a significant level of training and expertise that is unique to them and tailored specifically to handle discovery requests. Without this expertise, discovery can quickly become overwhelming or grow out of control. This is why it’s best not to think about eDiscovery in terms of line-item costs, but to consider the big picture, in which the total cost encompasses the expertise, time consumption, and security that is needed to move through the discovery phase most efficiently.

What Training is Required for eDiscovery Professionals?

Just as in any line of work, training is necessary to become an expert at something. For example, most of us could probably handle our own taxes and financials. But how about the taxes for our firm or company as a whole? Would we trust this task to anyone with a basic understanding, no probably not. We would expect at the very least the person was a CPA. The same principles should apply to eDiscovery. You or I could probably search and pull some emails from our accounts but would be the appropriate individual to handle searching various communication sources across 10s of custodians, probably not. These matters required specific understandings of the laws, requirements, and processes, which is why we should rely on the professionals that have dedicated their abilities to become experts.

eDiscovery professionals display most of their expertise through certifications offered by various organizations. Two of the most recognizable certifications are offered by ACEDS and Relativity. ACEDS’ Certified eDiscovery Specialist (CEDS), a trusted global indicator of e-discovery competence, demonstrates an individual’s expertise across the entire e-discovery lifecycle, including e-discovery project planning, international discovery, and ethics in e-discovery. Similar Relativity offers various certifications such as Relativity Certified Administrator (RCA) and multiple Relativity Specialist certifications. After completion of a certain number of certifications, an individuals earns the title of a Relativity Certified Expert and then the scarce honor of Relativity Certified Master.

Your Time is Valuable

Oftentimes, junior associates oversee the discovery phase and could truly benefit from the technology an eDiscovery vendor provides. eDiscovery involves collecting and reviewing a significant amount of data, and it could take hours upon hours to complete this process manually, taking time away from other crucial work that needs to be done.

When it comes to trial, a lawyer often needs to produce a document for court quickly. With eDiscovery software, this is easy to accomplish, but if someone were to look for the document manually, it could take hours of time that many lawyers simply don’t have. Even smaller cases need significant evidence and require large amounts of data. Therefore, the cost of using an eDiscovery service to easily find documents makes the price worth it.

Privacy Risks

When working through the discovery phase, you are often working with sensitive personal data. Unfortunately, in today’s world, it’s becoming more common for computer systems and data to become compromised. Often times we don’t consider the many vulnerabilities we create for our data as we transfer it from one party to the next.

When using an eDiscovery vendor, you don’t have to worry about these security risks. At Acorn, we use RelativityOne built on Microsoft Azure – the most secure cloud on the market. Because of this, RelativityOne meets the industry highest security standards such as ISO 27001; SOC 2, Type II; HIPAA; and FedRAMP. So not only is your data centralized in the cloud, but is also protected to the highest degree.

Is eDiscovery Worth the Cost?

If you’re considering working with an eDiscovery vendor, you may not be viewing the cost in terms of the opportunity. Completing the discovery phase on your own can take countless hours that your team might not have. To successfully complete eDiscovery on your own, there is a level of expertise that is needed. If you want to avoid wasted time, miscommunication, and privacy risks, it may be the best decision to opt for an eDiscovery vendor.

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About Acorn 

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.

Back to the Basics: Why Is It Important to Have a Centralized eDiscovery Platform?

The discovery phase of litigation usually is not something we all look forward to. And even when prepared, it can quickly become the most costly, time-consuming, and stressful part of litigation. With tens of thousands of documents to sort through, it’s hard to imagine how anyone can handle this task alone. While it is possible to handle eDiscovery in-house, not everyone has the resources to do so. Organizations can be caught off guard and overwhelmed fast, leading to unexpected time consumption and costs. This is where an eDiscovery partner can step in. Establishing a relationship with an eDiscovery partner early on allows you to have the resources available when you need to scale up quickly, with a team familiar with your organization and workflows. With a little bit of preparation, a partner can seamlessly step in and give you back the bandwidth to focus on more important things and keep your budget predictable and controlled.  

Think of eDiscovery as an Investment, Not a Cost

Budget concerns are a major concern for every business, coupled with the uncertainty of this past year. You may be wondering how the cost of using an eDiscovery company can actually save you money. Often, people fixate on the line item or upfront price tags. The process should not be looked at as a cost but an investment to manage your overall, long term budget.  

The first thing to think about is the amount of work your team would be doing if they were to complete the discovery process in-house. The easiest way to think about this is in terms of the total cost of review, notably one of the most expensive parts of eDiscovery. With the use of different technologies constantly expanding in the workplace, the amounts of data needed in litigation are only going to keep increasing. With investments upfront in an eDiscovery partner and/or technology, you can utilize efficient workflows, narrowing and refining your data at the onset. Yes, initial costs go up, but litigation typically isn’t a quick process. When looking at the proceeding months, we minimized our recurring data that needs to be hosted and ultimately our final set of documents needing reviewed. Something as small as 2,000 documents, will save us a week of work. Which leads us to our next consideration, Time.

Time Is an Asset

Time is another factor that usually gets overlooked when making these investment considerations. For example, if we say it only takes my team 20 hours review these documents, why would I pay someone else to help with this process? But we need to consider how much your team’s 20 hours is worth. Factoring in their salaried hourly rate, as well 20 hours not performing revenue/value generating activities, suddenly the costs become much more comparable.

But let’s say your team has the bandwidth to spare. We all know how difficult it can be to search for one email among the thousands in our inbox. Now, think of how difficult it becomes to search through hundreds of thousands of emails that might pertain to the information you need to prepare for trial. Using an eDiscovery platform, the same team member could spend just 15 minutes in an eDiscovery platform and be able to find the identify the relevant data and bypass all the “junk”. This is especially useful when you have many cases to work on at once, and every minute is valuable. Your team has more valuable activities they can focus on instead of treading through emails. So, we discussed all these great hypotheticals and efficiencies, but how do we make them a reality?

Find a Solution That’s Right for You

Before we dive into this section. Let us first state, there are many solutions out there and even if ours isn’t right for you, we strongly encourage you to still find one that is a good fit. The solution we leverage, RelativityOne, allows you to seamlessly collect, process, and review your documents. Whether that’s an email account, text messages on a phone, O365 documents, or Microsoft Teams conversations, RelativityOne allows us to easily obtain and review any data no matter where it resides.

It also allows us to detect information that you would not have been able to find otherwise, with advance searching capabilities and tools such as conceptual and contextual analytics. Removing the redundant process of combing through documents from your workload will streamline the eDiscovery process, allowing you to spend your time on the documents that actually matter.

Not only does it save you time, but additionally keeps all your relevant documents centralized, organized, and secure. Organization is important in any field, but is extremely critical when you’re working with large amounts of sensitive data. When piecing through the documents needed for trial, you want to make sure you have them all in one central, organized place which is readily available at your fingertip. By conveniently being able to centralize your documents and organize them with saved searches and tags, you can do just that.

Is It Worth It?

Discovery is one of the most challenging parts of litigation, and it can either be seamless, or require countless hours of work and stress. An eDiscovery platform like RelativityOne can turn discovery into a quick and easy step in the litigation process by minimizing your data burden, increasing your speed of identifying and reviewing documents, and keeping your data organized and accessible.

If you haven’t had these conversations yet, or haven’t in a while, now is a good time to understand how a partnership could improve your operations. The Acorn team is always happy to discuss and educate our community to ensure they are handling the discovery phase as efficiently as possible. Whether a case is 10GB or 1,000GB, the discovery process doesn’t have to be something we dread anymore.

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About Acorn 

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com. 

InfoGov World 2021 | The Next Generation of Piece Mail: Where does Microsoft Teams fit into Information Governance?

Acorn’s CEO, Lia Majid, and Business Development Manager, Zef Deda joined the 2021 InfoGov World Expo & Conference alongside 100+ expert speakers across major facets of IG, from Data Governance, Privacy & Data Protection, eDiscovery, etc. The Acorn team joined this conversation through their session, ‘The Next Generation of Piece Mail: Where Does Microsoft Teams fit into Information Governance?’, which explored the new information governance challenges related to the increasing use of Microsoft Teams throughout organizations and firms.

It’s no secret that over the past year, Microsoft Teams has rapidly increased in popularity due to many organizations switching to remote work during the pandemic. With this increase in Teams communications, organizations are faced with new challenges related to modern attachments, information governance considerations, handling ESI protocols, collections, and review and production.

A key point Acorn’s Chief Executive Officer emphasized during the session was that Teams data is disparate. She explained that Teams files are stored in one area of SharePoint for one-on-one conversations and another area of SharePoint for group conversations. Oftentimes, when completing collections and reviews, attachments shared in Teams will not easily carry over during eDiscovery. This can cause issues as trying to review documents that are stuck in the backend can be very difficult, especially if we aren’t aware they exist.

Lia explained that in order to collect one-on-one Teams messages, you need to have a certain level of subscription to allow you to access the data. If you’re not managing your Teams data proactively, then you’ll have discoverable information that can be costly to access through Microsoft. Not to mention, it’s not possible to extract one-on-one Teams data without having access to Microsoft’s Protected API, and you can’t currently collect team by team.

This is something to consider in terms of Information Governance, because if you need to remove data, you need to have policies oriented to these new types of communications in place to enforce this. For instance, if any employee were to leave your organization, you need to determine whether to leave their account as active for a period of time and for how long, so you can still access their Teams data.  

Due to these challenges, Lia and Zef suggested one of the ways to address these challenges is leveraging new technologies, such as Relativity Collect. Collect has an easy wizard that lets you access all these disparate sources in one centralized environment, following these steps

  1. Set up the collection job
  2. Choose the custodians
  3. Choose the types of data you want to collect
  4. Choose the workspace
  5. Publish the collected data to a processing workspace

Along with being cloud based, keeping your data more secure, its direct integration with Microsoft Teams makes this an ideal way to collect data. Once collected, the Relativity’s RSMF will allow you to review the Teams conversation the same way in RelativityOne as they would appear in the Teams platform.

As with any new challenge, we are continually identifying and addressing the best practices and procedures in which to stay one step ahead. As Teams has now become foundational in organizations and firms, now is the time to face these challenges and start the discussions on how you and your team can handle them and what steps you need to take to do so.

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About Acorn 

Acorn is a legal data consulting firm that specializes in AI and Advanced Analytics for litigation applications, while providing rigorous customer service to the eDiscovery industry. Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides a high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications. For more information, please visit www.acornls.com.