Post Author: 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.

AI Arsenal: How Boutique Firms Like MoloLamken Are Playing at the Larger Level with Artificial Intelligence

Recently named a 2023 Relativity AI Visionary, Acorn Legal Solutions’ CEO Lia Majid sat down with Jen Doran, Discovery Counsel at MoloLamken LLP to discuss how the use of AI/TAR has benefitted mid-sized law firms and, as Jen explained, has become more “fascinating than television.” 

Before attending Emory University School of Law, Jen worked at a law firm doing things the old-fashioned way, using red flags to mark hot documents and issues. After working in big law for eight years, Jen utilized her love of the “sleuthing” part of a case to take on a discovery-centric role at litigation boutique MoloLamken. She currently represents clients in government investigations, class actions, arbitration proceedings, and other complex federal and state court litigation.  

Leveraging technology to understand data from initial case assessment to gathering evidence for trial, Jen advises on best practices and collaborates with case teams to deploy strategies that will achieve clients’ desired goals and outcomes. Her expertise in eDiscovery, information governance, and data protection has enabled Jen to assist clients including commercial banks, a Fortune 100 insurance conglomerate, a global personal care product company, and Fortune 100 executives with complex matters. 

Need for Dedicated Discovery Resources  

Lia Majid: “So you specialized in eDiscovery at a large firm, and then you came over to a lit boutique at MoloLamken. How did you make that transition? What prompted you to take an eDiscovery role with MoloLamken?” 

Jen Doran: “I really was drawn to the fact that MoloLamken dedicated specific resources to developing their discovery practice. They carved out roles in multiple offices for discovery counsel, and what you may have heard about our lit boutique is that we’re known to “punch above our weight.” We come in sometimes mid-stream to very complex, sophisticated matters and we have to get our arms around a large amount of data very fast. So, I really liked coming to a place that knew that if you’re going to play ball at that level, you need to have folks who dedicate their time to understanding how to do that effectively.”  

Lia Majid: “Do you think that it’s common for firms of MoloLamken’s size or footprint to have dedicated discovery resources?” 

Jen Doran: “More often than not, I have seen the opposite, where associates are tasked with a large portion of the discovery work. That results in some unhappiness for multiple people – the team, the attorney, and the client. The attorney is not developing the skills they truly want to master most to develop their practice, and clients are paying exorbitant rates for review that may not have needed to be performed in that fashion.” 

Artificial Intelligence: The Whole Arsenal or the Silver Bullet? 

Discovery isn’t always easy – and due to its changing nature, it can feel nearly impossible to navigate AI/TAR without a dedicated discovery counsel or a trusted vendor for support. While AI tools may be challenging to navigate, they have been a cornerstone for MoloLamken’s success in providing time and cost savings to clients.  

Lia Majid: “Do you use a lot of AI tools when you’re working on your discovery projects?” 

Jen Doran: “Active learning and artificial intelligence can be great tools for prioritization; understanding and making sure that you get to the hottest materials first. If you tee up a mediation, you might even be able to resolve the case before millions of dollars of client money are spent on taking it further and that’s only because you had the key facts in hand right away. What I think is really cool is we are moving into a phase where we have sentiment analysis now and the machine will know to provide you with documents that might tell you how this person had developed a motive and give a feeling for some of the allegations that you’re trying to understand or build.”  

Despite the obvious positive changes that Jen has found through using AI for discovery, it is still something that other team members or clients may not understand or find as valuable.  

Lia Majid: “How is it easiest for you to sell AI to your other attorneys at your law firm and explain it to your clients so they feel more comfortable adopting it?” 

Jen Doran: “What I like to tell them is that this will really help us improve the accuracy of our product. If we know that a certain document with a high responsiveness score might’ve been coded as non-responsive, we know to look at those in particular. We can spend more of our time on difficult privilege calls or further review discussions because we aren’t engaging in constant rework of documents. Artificial intelligence has made us able to reduce the time that we spend laying a second pair of eyes, a third pair of eyes, a fourth pair of eyes on a document, and allows us to really focus on making sure we understand what the most important information is.” 

Lia Majid: “It sounds like what you’re saying is that AI is a tool in your arsenal, but not the silver bullet, so you need an eDiscovery expert to put all the pieces together and apply it to the specific situation of the case.”  

Jen Doran: “Anyone who is familiar with the tools is required to know what its limitations are. We all know about the model rules of professional conduct that tell us our duty of competence – that we are required to – if not understand the technology – then at least bring on an expert or collaborate with someone who does understand the technology. You cannot ignore the technology available because then you are doing a disservice to your client. It is here to stay, and it is not something where we can stick our head in the sand and ignore it to do things the old-fashioned way, because it will not work, and you may get in trouble.” 

Staying Ahead of the Curve – Changes in AI in Recent Years  

Lia Majid: “How have you seen AI change your practice of eDiscovery in the years that you’ve been practicing [in eDiscovery] so far?” 

Jen Doran: “We are moving into an era where we have more mobile communications and chat communications. Users don’t even seem to talk on email as much as they used to because they have other applications that are faster, more immediate, and more casual. And so, using these tools, we can sometimes understand more of the sentiments behind what people are actually trying to convey. We can perform better quality control because the volume of documents has increased so exponentially. We’re able to look at what a responsiveness rank might be and determine whether documents need to be corrected.” 

Lia Majid: “So you’re using AI for quality control now, in addition to prioritizing which document should be reviewed? Do you think that trend is going to continue? Or do you see AI broadening how it affects the discovery practice?” 

Jen Doran: “I think that now folks are more concerned with whether generative AI is going to take on the role of understanding what information is being fed into it and providing responses like: ‘Tell me what’s in these documents. I gave you 1,000 emails, tell me what’s in there.’ People are wondering if lawyers are even going to be needed anymore because now, we have machines. What’s going to be really important is, instead of having just a few individuals in the industry who are really invested and engaged in this subject matter, it’s going to become a more uniform and requisite part of day-to-day life. Just like in the early days, electronic Bates Stamping was novel and now it’s routine. Active learning, and all the different methods that we have now to incorporate artificial intelligence are also going to become somewhat rote.” 

Lia Majid: “Given the breadth of expertise required for eDiscovery, do you think it makes sense for all firms to have an eDiscovery expert on staff?” 

Jen Doran: “In a perfect world I would say that, yes, every entity in the WORLD should have an eDiscovery counsel! However, that’s not necessarily always appropriate. The legal field is unique in having such a high-quality availability of vendors who really know their stuff inside out, acting as outside consultants who can come in on a matter-by-matter basis and assist firms, depending on their size and their needs, with what they have to accomplish. So, in that respect, it’s very feasible and reasonable that some firms might be able to turn to a vendor for that purpose.”  

As data volumes only continue to spiral upward, Jen’s predictions may be correct, as there is only more and more data that will need to be collected, with an already disproportionate lack of personnel who are interested and capable of completing this type of work. Similarly, not all organizations have the option to use high-powered eDiscovery technology due to budgetary concerns, which is why Jen is also a proud supporter of Relativity’s Justice for Change program. 

Access to eDiscovery For All – MoloLamken’s Justice for Change Partnership 

Justice for Change is a cornerstone of Acorn’s work as it allows the team to provide Relativity access to organizations that are making a positive impact through cases related to racial and social injustice.  

Lia Majid: “You specifically and your firm also are involved in Relativity’s Justice for Change program. When you think about Justice for Change, what does it mean to you?” 

Jen Doran: “What really struck me about the Justice for Change program is that it went beyond your traditional understanding of what pro bono work means. We understand that many firms have pro bono practices where they dedicate time and resources to helping those who might not otherwise be able to engage a high-powered law firm. But the difference with Relativity’s Justice for Change program is that it specifically targets individuals who might not otherwise have the ability to incorporate the tools required to pursue litigation.” 

Lia Majid: “A lot of people don’t think about the data aspect of pro bono work because data can be used as a tool. Document dumps are a strategy that some attorneys use as they try to drown the other side in documents. How do you think Justice for Change helps take away the advantage of those with access to resources that are engaging in document dump strategies?” 

Jen Doran: “There sometimes will be calls for pro bono lawyers to come to airports, or come to clinics or various places, and people are able to dedicate their time, but that doesn’t mean they’re able to dedicate [the cost of] an eDiscovery platform or artificial intelligence tools or any of the other resources that might really help bring the case to fruition. Thankfully, Relativity has seen that need and has dedicated resources to helping those that require access to justice to get what they need.”  

MoloLamken’s Tools for Success 

Lia Majid: “Have you worked with service partners before?” 

Jen Doran: “There are two types of relationships that really matter to us. There is certainly when our data is being hosted by an outside vendor, and they are providing the platform. But there are also vendors who present products where we are fully capable of performing the work in a self-service model. Both of those relationships are critical because I am a lawyer, not an engineer, and I do not know how to build a machine. I love that depending on what the case needs, we have both of those types of partnerships available to us and we have great vendors out there.” 

It is always exciting to see AI innovators discuss the importance of this technology and the way that it will continue to change in the future. Jen is a perfect example of an AI expert who flows with the ever-changing nature of the industry and urges others to continue to gain knowledge of it as well. Through her work at MoloLamken, along with partnering with Acorn through Relativity’s Justice for Change program, experts like Jen are well-equipped to be pioneers of this rapidly advancing technology and prepared to help clients on a larger scale.  

Be sure to follow Lia and Jen to stay informed on their evolving perspectives of the changes in AI as they continue to navigate and lead others in the field.  

How to Effectively Run a Review: Putting It All Together

As discussed in our previous articles, we identified where opportunities existed throughout our review process which can directly impact our bottom line and contain our total cost of review. 

To recap, we first identified the two hidden cost drivers of review, throughput and rework, that can secretly cause review budgets to escalate. Secondly, we identified how an effective project ramp-up and successful review management led to cost reductions of up to approximately 30%. Lastly, we identified how proper reviewer optimization and coding consistencies can increase the number of documents reviewed by 30%, thus leading to further cost savings. 

Individually, we can see that each one of our choices throughout the review led to notable savings over the life of the case. In today’s exercise, we will look back at all the opportunities we previously identified and the choices we made. This leads us to our final question: What happens when we put it all together? 

Establishing the Numbers 

Let’s recap the assumptions we will continue to work from. In this scenario, we have 100,000 documents that need to be reviewed, with 15,000 documents needing to be re-reviewed (reworked) at a review throughput rate of 40 docs/hour, at a $42/hour rate. With these rework and throughput rates accounted for, this results in 115,000 effective documents reviewed.

Putting It All Together 

So, what happens when you put it all together? If we optimize our review team and effectively manage their work throughout the project, utilizing technology such as batching strategies and coding consistencies, what’s the net impact of that in economic terms? 

The “Perfect” Review Setup 

Let’s start with our review team. In the example above, we see that having an efficient review team that has been properly trained results in the number of documents reviewed increasing by 6 additional documents/hour. Just by being strategic on who you pick for your review team will lower the number of documents that need to be reworked by 12%. This shows how small tweaks to your review project from the beginning can lower the overall cost of the budget by almost 20%!  

However, reducing review costs doesn’t stop at the beginning of the project. To consistently reduce review costs, monitoring your review team throughout the process becomes increasingly important. Using reports and statistics to actively monitor your team will show you how many documents reviewers are coding per hour, as well as the overall pace of the project.  

Let’s say, for example, you have six reviewers on a project and the standard norm for reviewers is roughly 40-50 documents an hour. Like the example below, you may have one rockstar reviewer that is reviewing 90 docs/hour, have some reviewers who are reviewing in the 40-45 range, one reviewer that is a little bit below the bar, and two reviewers that are way below the average.  

In managing this team, you may choose to coach reviewer 1, cut reviewers number 2 and 3 since they are below average, and flag reviewer 6 to peek at later to make sure that their coding is consistent. 

If you were to make this decision to cut reviewers 2 and 3 in this scenario, although the weeks to complete the review may increase by 1.3 weeks, the throughput of the reviewers is also increasing from 40 documents/hour up to 53 documents/hour.  

Even though this sample review project was extended for an additional week, it still allowed for a decrease in costs. By reducing the team, it increased documents reviewed to 53 from 40, aka 13 more documents an hour, and lowered rework by 6% which is a 30% reduction on total cost.  

Fine Tuning the Review Process   

So, you have your review team, but you want to see what you can do to get the review moving quicker. Tech strategies like persistent highlighting – not just of privilege documents that hit on a privilege term, but also those that hit on one of the agreed upon terms, can help the review team identify the terms quickly​. Rather than just batching out documents for a review based on hits, it’s best to think about how to batch out more strategically to reduce costs. 

As you can see in this example, by doing something as simple as batching strategically, you can increase the number of documents reviewed by 30%, lower the quality control by 3% and in this example, lower the cost of review by $30k. 

The last cost driver in review deals with coding consistency. This refers to the ways we can keep coding consistent and thus reduce how many documents that may need to be re-reviewed because of coding inconsistencies.   

By leveraging techniques such as streamlining the coding panel, utilizing dashboards, and engaging active learning, you can capture potential issues and inconsistencies in real time before they spiral into a huge problem. In this example, although the number of documents reviewed did not change, the percentage of rework dropped by almost 10%. This also lowered the total cost of review by almost $10K. 

The End Is in Sight 

Now it’s time to reap the fruits of our labor. So, let’s move into our review budget and look at how these strategic, incremental changes to your project reduce risks of inconsistencies that can affect the quality and costs of your review.  

Throughout our project, we saw several reductions through these techniques. However, each of these are separate tactics, and if we were to subtract all the percentage reductions we found in our review budget, we would end up with diminishing returns. What we do see though, are substantial savings. Looking at all of these techniques together, if you are looking at 100,000 documents to be reviewed using a throughput of 60 docs/hour, and your rework goes from 15% to 5%, then you’re now only reviewing 105,000 effective documents, and your budget substantially decreases from $120,000 to $73,000.  

Now, we live in a world where we have to find people who can do this work and who are skilled at it. Paying these reviewers $42/hour may be ambitious, so we must determine what number we would be willing to pay our contract reviewers under the strategic workflow that gets us to the same price so that we can reach a middle ground. 

Running the numbers, we found that this number would be $69/hour. So, if we’re really strategic and pay a reviewer $69/hour, we will come out to about the same place as if we were to be less strategic and going for cheaper reviewers. Obviously, paying $69/hour isn’t necessarily always going to be the case, and the right dollar amount is usually somewhere in the middle of $42/hour and $69/hour.  

This is also a good framework to use when needing to explain why choosing a reviewer with more expertise would actually benefit the client and the team. 

Predictable, Certain, and Stress Free 

This scenario goes against the belief that if we want to reduce the budget, we’re going to have to give up on quality. The truth is that if you run a good process, you can win on quality and cost at the same time.  

We’ve seen that these same techniques are going to result in a reduced error rate and increased quality, so less of your documents will be miscoded. There is a cost to poor quality, and as we continue to use these techniques, quality is going to improve. The attorneys, the client, and everyone involved will have much less stress about the process because we will know what our assumptions are, what our milestones are that we need to hit to make our budget and deadline. We’ll know in week one, week two, and week three of the review whether we’re on target or falling behind, and if we’re falling behind, and can get ahead of it by communicating what has changed with the client from our expectations, or communicating with opposing counsel on what has changed. This allows us to not be subject to the mercy of document review and to start to gain control over the process resulting in a much better overall experience. 

If you have an upcoming review project and are interested in learning more about Acorn’s review services, feel free to contact us at Info@AcornLS.com. 

Announcing Acorn’s Justice for Change Partnership with Goldberg Kohn

Acorn Legal Solutions Establishes Pro Bono Hosting Partnership through Relativity’s Justice for Change

Acorn will support Justice for Change grant recipients in their use of RelativityOne

CHICAGO, IL – July 17, 2023 – Acorn Legal Solutions, a woman-led eDiscovery firm headquartered in Chicago, today announced its designation as a Hosting Partner with Relativity’s Justice for Change program. This partnership will enable Acorn to provide hosting, administrative and project management support to grant recipient organizations in their use of RelativityOne.

“We are proud to be a Hosting Partner of the Justice for Change program as it fosters an opportunity for us to have a positive impact on racial and social justice in our communities,” said Lia Majid, CEO at Acorn Legal Solutions. “I am grateful that our team can make a difference by democratizing access to eDiscovery technology and providing support for those organizations in need of it.”

Acorn will be partnering with Chicago-based commercial law firm Goldberg Kohn to provide hosting and production of documents related to a case of toxic contamination in a predominantly minority community. Acorn will help the Goldberg Kohn team to manage and organize a large volume of documents using RelativityOne to present as evidence to the court.

Relativity’s Justice for Change program focuses on increasing access to justice by providing free use of its cloud-based e-discovery product, RelativityOne, to organizations tackling legal cases and academic and policy research related to racial and social justice. Specifically, Justice for Change has allocated 100TB of RelativityOne data to be used on pro bono projects led by customers or nonprofit organizations. Through the Justice for Change hosting partnership, Acorn is committed to the continuous pursuit of justice through great pro bono work and building important connections with Goldberg Kohn.

“We are grateful that Acorn is providing access to RelativityOne in order to defend our clients’ case and shed light on other instances where minority communities in particular are negatively impacted by environmental harms,” said Rachel Steiner, who is counsel at Goldberg Kohn. “The ability to use this technology will not only help our current clients but can show other individuals in similar situations that limited resources should not prevent them from accessing the justice they deserve.”

Acorn will work with Goldberg Kohn using RelativityOne to migrate their data from its current Relativity Server database and organize their files for evidence. Their data consists of PDFs, native files, and Concordance load file productions, that will be hosted and produced.

“Just as transitioning to the cloud will play a crucial role in helping Goldberg Kohn to more easily pursue justice on behalf of their clients, the partnership between these two Chicago-based companies will facilitate justice within the larger local community and beyond,” said Johnathan Hill, Community Engagement Lead at Relativity. “We are happy to see Acorn Legal extend their involvement with Justice for Change and are excited to welcome Goldberg Kohn into the Justice for Change community.”

Organizations, including current Relativity customers, doing legal work on behalf of racial justice that would benefit from software to help them build out a case narrative can apply for free use of our cloud-based e-discovery product, RelativityOne. To learn more, visit: https://www.relativity.com/company/giving-back/justice-for-change/

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. Although capable of serving AmLaw 100 Law Firms and Corporate Legal departments, Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications.

About Goldberg Kohn

Goldberg Kohn Ltd. is a commercial law firm located in Chicago with principal concentrations in business litigation, commercial finance, creditors’​ rights and bankruptcy, corporate transactions, federal and state taxation, intellectual property, labor and employment, and real estate.

About Relativity

Relativity makes software to help users organize data, discover the truth and act on it. Its SaaS product, RelativityOne, manages large volumes of data and quickly identifies key issues during litigation and internal investigations. Relativity has more than 300,000 users in approximately 40 countries serving thousands of organizations globally primarily in legal, financial services and government sectors, including the U.S. Department of Justice and 198 of the Am Law 200. Please contact Relativity at sales@relativity.com or visit www.relativity.com for more information.

How to Effectively Run a Review: Proper Reviewer Optimization & Coding Consistencies

Continuing on the subject of review, the largest cost driver within the EDRM, it must be reiterated that reducing review costs doesn’t stop at the beginning of the project. To consistently reduce review costs, hidden burdens such as rework and throughput must be addressed throughout your review.  

So, returning to this always timely subject, let’s revisit that all-important working question of: How do our choices during a review affect our total cost? 

Thus far, we’ve analyzed the hidden cost drivers of review and successful project ramp up in reducing total costs of review (TCR). Today, let’s see how we can further streamline our review and reduce our total costs through reviewer optimization and coding consistencies. 

Establishing the Numbers  

Let’s recap the assumptions we will continue to work off of. In this scenario, we have 100,000 documents that need to be reviewed, with 15,000 documents needing to be re-reviewed (reworked) at a review throughput rate of 40 docs/hour, at a $42/hour rate. With these rework and throughput rates accounted for, this results in 115,000 effective documents reviewed.  

In our previous article, How to Effectively Run a Review: Reduce Overall Costs by Up to 30% with Successful Project Ramp Up & Management, we took this same scenario and looked at how optimizing your review team from the start and effectively managing your team throughout the project can have significant cost savings. We found that, through this, we were able to produce significant cost savings – upwards of 30 percent. 

In today’s exercise, the last question we’ll visit here is: What technology optimizations can you make throughout the review project that will increase cost savings? 

Fine Tuning the Review Process  

In our previous Groundhog Day webinar, Senior Project Advisor Robin LeDonne discussed enhancements that can be made to increase the speed of any review project, “You have your review team, but you want to see what you can do to get the review moving quicker” Robin stated. Tech strategies like persistent highlighting – not just of privilege documents that hit on a privilege term, but also those that hit on one of the agreed upon terms, can help the review team identify the terms quickly​. Rather than just batching out documents for a review based on hits, it’s best to think about how to batch out more strategically, such as:​ 

  • Keeping contextually similar documents batched together​ 
  • Batching by chronology and/or custodian ​ 

If the documents can be reviewed in this way, it turns the review into more of a story which will help the team not only with reviewing the docs but in creating a strategy for how the overall case can be handled or tried. ​ 

It is also important to think through the coding panel. We have found the best results are to keep it as simple as possible, with well-defined coding descriptions. It is ideal, if possible, to leave the hot document determination to the subject matter experts and then look for similar documents, “I’ve been on projects where the team says when you run across a hot document, go ahead and tag it, but what I’ve seen happen is one of two things: every document is suddenly tagged ‘hot’ or ‘key’ or nothing is tagged,” Robin explained.  

Can These Optimizations Be Backed Up? 

As you can see, by doing something as simple as batching strategically, you can increase the number of documents reviewed by 30%, lower the quality control by 3% and in this example, lower the cost of review by $30k.   

How Can We Keep Coding Consistent? 

The last cost driver in review deals with coding consistency. This refers to the ways we can keep coding consistent and thus, reduce how many documents that may need to be re-reviewed because of coding inconsistencies.  

The structure of how the coding panel is set up can determine whether it is streamlined and if it flows based on what reviewers should be searching for within the document. An example would be to have “the must have on every reviewed document” tag near the top of the coding panel, “I personally like using nested choices and event handlers, such as ensuring a choice is made by a reviewer before moving on to the next document,” Robin stated. 

Dashboards are also ideal to catch issues before they become a significant QC problem. Dashboards track real time review progress and can help in finding any reviewers that may need additional coaching on the material. They can also let us know more about the data we are reviewing, such as whether the data collected is behaving as anticipated – i.e., if it is relevant and if it pertains to the anticipated issue. By catching issues in real time, this allows the team more flexibility to pivot and hone in on what matters most. 

“I am also a huge advocate of having an active learning project that runs in the background as a QC step whenever possible. This is especially helpful when there is a subject matter expert that can review the seed documents, effectively teaching the computer prior to the review teams’ review,” said Robin. ​ 

Custom indexing in Relativity also allows each workspace to be tailored for the needs of the case, all the way down to what will be searched and which data will be ignored. By tailoring the search index to include a word or character, you will be able to get rid of false hits on terms, thus lowering the total documents to be reviewed.  

What Do the Numbers Say? 

By leveraging these techniques, such as streamlining the coding panel, utilizing dashboards, and engaging active learning, you can capture potential issues and inconsistencies in real time before they spiral into a huge problem. In this example, although the number of documents reviewed did not change, the percentage of rework dropped by almost 10%. This also lowered the total cost of review by almost $10K.

How You Can Apply This  

Through making strategic, incremental changes to your reviewer batching strategies and coding consistencies, you can see how these small changes can affect the quality and costs of your review. While it is important to plan ahead and create an effective review team, using these tech strategies can further amplify your review by boosting reviewer efficiency, leading to less errors and larger cost savings. 

Stay tuned for next month as we continue this exercise and put all of these techniques together to see how we can reduce our total review costs!  

Be Sure to Follow Us for the Latest Content and 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. 

Access to Justice Amidst Injustice: Using Tech to Prove Accountability for Child Abuse

“Relativity’s Justice for Change program gives us an advantage in an industry where we are always fighting uphill. It gives us an edge to be able to use RelativityOne and find that one detail that saves our case. We are in the business of protecting children, so we need to get around any biases and save these kids and these mothers,” said Cynthia Cummings, a case manager at Child Justice.

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit in the state of Maryland, Child Justice has a strong track record of advocating for children’s rights when the courts fail to protect them in cases of abuse and domestic violence. Recently, attorneys at Child Justice represented a complex family court matter involving child sexual abuse. Through Relativity’s Justice for Change program, they partnered with Acorn Legal Solutions to host and review case documents in RelativityOne.

Fighting Courts’ Biases to Protect Maryland’s Children

When claims of abuse are made, Child Justice steps in to protect Maryland’s children who are “lost in the system” after exposure to family violence, physical and/or sexual abuse, substance addictions, or neglect. Pro bono attorneys working with Child Justice provide abuse victims with highly skilled legal services for lower court and appellate court cases. These free legal services help keep children out of the hands of their abusers.

A substantial portion of Child Justice clients are mothers of color, many of whom are not proficient in English, who are trying to protect their children from abusive fathers. Utilizing RelativityOne makes a critical difference in a legal setting where racial and gender bias exists within courts: hard evidence is needed in these cases, as oral testimony is not often considered reliable.

Due to the allegations of abuse and common counter-allegations regarding mental health, Child Justice’s cases involve multiple expert witnesses for multiple-day trials. And since many of the allegations in these cases involve medical and mental health records, each expert has a voluminous document load for their testimony. As a result, one of their biggest challenges for trial is managing and organizing the volume of documents they’ll need to review and, potentially, present to the court. 

“This program is a huge advantage for us. It raises respect for the victims in these cases, who so often fall through the cracks because this is an area where legal services are really expensive, finding good advocacy is hard, and issues are often not seen. This is an enormous improvement,” said Eileen King, founder and executive director of Child Justice.

To support their most recent case, Child Justice had to review thousands of documents—many of them PDFs—to determine patterns within the evidence and create a chronological timeline of abuse.

The Truth Behind the Documents: Using Case Dynamics to Determine History of Abuse

“We don’t have the time or manpower to handle reviewing 4,000 documents 200 times for one specific issue. It’s just not possible. We’re never going to get 100 percent of everything, but Relativity makes it very close once you get to know what search terms to use,” said Ada Husten, a paralegal at Child Justice.

When taking on their case surrounding a high-conflict divorce involving child sexual abuse allegations, Child Justice urgently reached out to the Justice for Change program, which provides free use of Relativity’s cloud-based e-discovery product to organizations doing legal work on behalf of social justice and racial equity. They were paired with Chicago-based Justice for Change partner Acorn Legal Solutions, who could provide access to the e-discovery technology and expertise they needed.

“Acorn had a lot of experience and advanced knowledge of the functionality of Case Dynamics in RelativityOne. They gave us suggestions to automatically load or tag certain things, which saved us so much more time. We didn’t have to explain our litigation experience to Acorn because they already knew what we were talking about, and there wasn’t any misunderstanding or lack of being able to jump from litigation lingo to IT lingo,” said Cynthia.

Through the Justice for Change program, Child Justice was able to use Case Dynamics to get specific about the facts they needed to find in a document and give each fact a timeline. By identifying each fact individually, they were able to create a chronology within Relativity and search by a specific issue or a specific person. They then were able to take those facts and documents, and package them through the reporting function to hand over to the attorneys so they would have a succinct issue packet which they could then use to prepare questions for witnesses at trial.

They also sent the report to the experts who were going to testify, coding relevant documents that were specific to each particular expert and giving them a narrative on that particular issue and any sub-issues.

“Our facts weren’t ambiguous at all. It was one fact after another. We hit them hard because Relativity allowed us to get down into the weeds to find that last detail. Instead of just having one document or a text message supporting that statement, we had 300,” said Ada.

The Power of Partnership

This partnership highlights one of the most essential factors of the Justice for Change program: creating a partnership that allows non-profits like Child Justice to have access to an organizational, time-saving tool along with project managers who have advanced knowledge and expertise.

“We are proud to be a hosting partner of the Justice for Change program, as it fosters an opportunity for us to have a positive impact on racial and social justice in our communities,” said Lia Majid, CEO at Acorn Legal Solutions. “I am grateful that our team can make a difference by democratizing access to e-discovery technology and providing support for those organizations in need of it.”

In this situation, with help from Acorn and RelativityOne, Child Justice was not only able to find one broad issue within the evidence, but had proof to back it up with mass quantities of documentation in that particular category. “We were able to get into the weeds with no stone unturned. Issues were arising that we didn’t even know were there,” Ada remarked.

The breadth of RelativityOne’s capabilities, along with Acorn’s expertise creating time saved, allowed the Child Justice team to protect this child, and turn the tables on the biases of the court system and society. “Because of Relativity, this child was safe, and mom was able to breathe again,” said Eileen.

Justice for Change partners like Acorn Legal Solutions make it possible for non-profit organizations to have access to the technology they need, without having to manually review a large number of documents in a short amount of time.

“We are seeing organizations with the same data challenges our customers face who often can’t use technology because of the budget constraints of nonprofit work,” said Johnathan Hill, who leads Relativity’s Justice for Change program. “We’re proud to remove that barrier of technology and play a small role empowering organizations like Child Justice to pursue justice.”

These partnerships create access to justice for those who have been victims of abuse. We hope that stories like these will urge other law firms and non-profit organizations to take action, as there is always a way to create justice in the face of injustice.

How to Effectively Run a Review: Reduce Overall Costs by Up to 30% with Successful Project Ramp Up & Management

Continuing on the subject of review, the largest cost driver within the EDRM, we will consider how the factors of rework and throughput can often be hidden burdens to managing a review project.  

Last time, we focused on defining these infrequently discussed cost drivers of review. Today, we will hone in on how to reduce costs through an effective project ramp-up and successful review management. 

Establishing the Numbers 

Let’s recap the assumptions we will continue to work off of. In this scenario, we have 100,000 documents that need to be reviewed, with 15,000 documents needing to be re-reviewed (reworked) at a review throughput rate of 40 docs/hour, at a $42/hour rate. With these rework and throughput rates accounted for, this results in 115,000 effective documents reviewed. 

In today’s exercise, we will take a look at how optimizing your review team from the start and effectively managing your team throughout the project can have significant cost savings. 

Is a Large Review Team Worth It? 

In our previous Groundhog Day webinar, Senior Project Advisor Robin LeDonne discussed the importance of choosing a small efficient team of high-skilled, quality, trained reviewers, “Like a coach preparing for a game, you need to figure out who would be good on which review project and why,” Robin explained. 

By keeping track of your pool of reviewers who have a proven track record of good performance, along with being familiar with your processes, you can rest assured that your review will likely move in a positive direction. And just to be sure, let’s take a look at what the numbers say. 

In the example above, we see that having an efficient review team that has been properly trained results in the number of documents reviewed increasing by 6 additional documents/hour. Just by being strategic on who you pick on your review team, this will lower the number of documents that need to be reworked by 12%. This shows how small tweaks to your review project from the beginning can lower the overall cost of the budget by almost 20%! 

Does Reviewer Efficiency Factor into the Puzzle? 

Reducing review costs doesn’t stop at the beginning of the project. To consistently reduce review costs, you need to lower the amount of rework. So, monitoring your review team becomes increasingly important. Using reports and statistics to actively monitor your team will show you how many documents reviewers are coding per hour, as well as the overall pace of the project. 

Let’s say, for example, you have six reviewers on a project and the standard norm for reviewers is roughly 40-50 documents an hour. Like the example below, you may have one rockstar reviewer that is reviewing 90 docs/hour, have some reviewers who are reviewing in the 40-45 range, one reviewer that is a little bit below the bar, and two reviewers that are way below the average. 

Robin discussed, “So, if I was managing this team, I would coach reviewer 1, cut reviewer number 2 and 3 immediately since they are below average, and I would flag reviewer 6 to peek at later to make sure that their coding is consistent, and they aren’t just flying through without making informed decisions on each document.” 

Robin’s decision to cut reviewers 2 and 3 in this scenario shows that although the weeks to complete the review may increase by 1.3 weeks, the throughput of the reviewers is also increasing from 41 documents/hour up to 53 documents/hour. 

Even though this sample review project was extended for an additional week, it still allowed for a decrease in costs. By reducing the team, it increased documents reviewed to 53 from 40, aka 13 more documents an hour, and lowered rework by 6% which is a 30% reduction on total cost. 

How You Can Apply This 

You may fear cutting low-performing reviewers in order to meet deadlines on time, but this scenario shows that quality reviewers have a more significant effect on the budget than time to completion. Through strategic, incremental changes to your review team, you can see how using a small, efficient team reduces risks of inconsistencies that can affect the quality and costs of your review. 

Stay tuned for next month as we continue this exercise and examine how we can leverage advanced technologies to further streamline our review and further reduce our total costs. 

____________

Be Sure to Follow Us for the Latest Content and 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.

Announcing Acorn’s CEO Lia Majid’s AI Visionary Award

Relativity Names Lia Majid a 2023 AI Visionary

The list honors leaders who have taken seminal steps in advancing AI adoption within their industries

CHICAGO, IL – March 23, 2023 — Acorn Legal Solutions today announced that CEO Lia Majid has been named an AI Visionary by global legal technology company, Relativity. Relativity’s annual list of AI Visionaries recognizes and celebrates early adopters of AI, particularly in areas where managing risk is a top priority and the approach to technology adoption has traditionally been more conservative. 

Lia has made AI a cornerstone of Acorn’s services offerings and has set a high bar for technological competence and AI prowess for her organization. She also firmly believes that educating clients with hands-on experience empowers them to leverage self-service tools and drives greater efficiency within their teams.

“AI is important for the way that I manage Acorn because my team works with this technology across many platforms and on numerous landmark cases,” said Lia Majid. “We help clients incorporate AI technologies into their e-discovery operations or legal practice by automating their review process in order to assist with saving money, driving faster insight, and avoiding inadvertent privilege disclosures. My team utilizes AI to help our clients get better control of facts and provide a clearer scope of e-discovery.”

“Although this is an award recognizing me, it really is a recognition of the outstanding team at Acorn” said Lia. “In particular, our Director of Advanced Analytics, Josh Treat, has been involved in AI workflows for over 10 years building the foundation of our AI expertise. Our Director of eDiscovery, Tracey Oldenburg, has been developing custom scripts and views to make the process as seamless as possible to end users. Our Vice President of Client Solutions, Zef Deda, has been a thought leader on how to apply AI solutions to drive client outcomes and client satisfaction. Thank you for all your hard work and many hours teaching me about this technology.”

“We are excited to once again spotlight an incredible group of evangelists who are redefining the power of AI, and exemplify the intersection of AI and human intelligence,” said Phil Saunders, Chief Executive Officer at Relativity. “This year’s AI Visionaries embody the trailblazing spirit, tenacity and creativity required to advance a technology that is becoming increasingly commonplace. Today, we honor these innovators and applaud their efforts to uncover novel applications of AI and drive change within their own organizations.”

Read Lia’s full AI Visionary Award interview with Relativity here!

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. Although capable of serving AmLaw 100 Law Firms and Corporate Legal departments, Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications.

About Relativity

Relativity makes software to help users organize data, discover the truth and act on it. Its SaaS product, RelativityOne, manages large volumes of data and quickly identifies key issues during litigation and internal investigations. Relativity has more than 300,000 users in approximately 40 countries serving thousands of organizations globally primarily in legal, financial services and government sectors, including the U.S. Department of Justice and 198 of the Am Law 200. Please contact Relativity at sales@relativity.com or visit www.relativity.com for more information.

Groundhog Day 2023 | How to Effectively Run a Review Project: Not Your Standard View

Every year, Acorn presents our Groundhog Day webinar to address changes and trends within the ever-changing and growing eDiscovery industry. With budgets and economic concerns currently at the forefront in every industry, Acorn’s CEO, Lia Majid, and Senior Project advisor, Robin LeDonne, approached the largest cost driver within the EDRM – review. Instead of explaining review in terms of line-item costs, they addressed the not-so-frequently discussed cost drivers that can secretly cause review budgets to escalate. 

Recently, our team presented with Lawline CLE to discuss the largest cost driver of the review cycle, which is the actual reviewing of the documents. However, pricing as a means to reduce the total cost of review has largely been pushed as far as it goes. We’ve found that for the most part, the prices for services have really been squeezed as much as they can, and there just isn’t any more juice to give. Where there is room, though, is with strategic workflows.  

So, what drives the costs of document review to the point that the document review process is the biggest cost driver? 

Cost Drivers of Document Review 

This leads us to two of the major cost drivers in review: rework and throughput. Lia defined review in terms of these Six Sigma techniques, relating them to Gordon Ramsey’s popular TV series Hell’s Kitchen.  

Throughput 

She described throughput as the total document views per hour, not the total unique document views per hour. Lia explained. “Let’s use Hell’s Kitchen as an example. There are two sources of throughput: the non-controllable factor (fish per hour made at the stove) and the controllable factor (fish going out to the customer). If 50 documents are each reviewed 2 times in an hour, or 100 documents are reviewed once in an hour, the throughput is going to be the same.”  

Rework 

The difference between the two throughput definitions is primarily how we’d define rework. For example, if the chef presents 1 raw fish for every 10 fish he completes, his rework would be 10%.  

For 50 dishes ordered in an hour, the Effective Ordering Rate is now cooking 55 fish every hour to deliver the 50 he needed. Similarly, a document review may have 100,000 documents to review, but 115,000 Effective Documents to review. 

What Matters More? 

 Since both rework, which evaluates the efficiency of the reviewer and throughput, the hourly rate of the reviewer matter a lot in terms of cost, how do we choose which one matters more?   

We know that we want efficient, knowledgeable reviewers that also have a high review rate. However, although they do exist, they are rare. Generally, we must make a choice, and a lot of times that choice is going to be based on the type of review – is it a basic responsive review, or is it going to be an issue driven review with several issues that will also need to be reviewed for privilege. With a basic review, the focus may be on just getting through a first pass on the documents, in which case the hourly rate matters. The latter, an issue driven review where there are tons of issues and privilege calls to be made, efficiency may matter more. ​ 

But what if there is a way to always know what should matter more?  

In our upcoming series, we will be addressing the improvements that need to be made throughout a review project in order to improve standard review operations and significantly cut costs. Using a typical review framework, we will show how an effective project ramp up, successful review management, reviewer optimization, and coding consistencies can lead to a predictable, stress-free review. 

Stay tuned for our upcoming blog series to stay informed of these actionable strategies that can immediately combat significant cost drivers of review! To view the full 2023 Groundhog Day session, click here. 

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.

Lawline CLE Recap | Managing the Total Cost of Review: A Step-by-Step View

Our CEO Lia Majid and Senior Project Advisor Robin LeDonne recently presented with Lawline CLE on actionable strategies to improve your workflow leading up to review. Within their CLE, Lia and Robin walked through a series of scenarios to demonstrate how your choices prior to review affect the total cost of review. 

Reduce Costs with Strategic Workflow 

Robin and Lia identified one scenario that showed how targeting and narrowing the scope of collections reduces review costs by up to approximately 30%. Secondly, Robin and Lia identified how an early investment in Early Case Assessment to reduce your cull rate by a few percent leads to cost reductions of up to approximately 15%. Lastly, they identified how investing in advanced analytics, such as active learning, can lead to significant cost reductions of up to approximately 30%. 

Talking through these scenarios, Lia and Robin explained how strategic workflows can provide a significant amount of budget efficiency beyond just line-item reductions. By identifying strategic opportunities throughout the life of your project, you can continue to seize all possible cost savings. Lia and Robin identified these 3 effective ways to do so and stressed that they all don’t need to be utilized, but by adopting just one of these approaches you are going to see significant results pretty quickly.   

Court Decisions Supporting TAR Workflows 

Next, Robin discussed how courts have increasingly accepted technology assisted review (TAR) tools and workflows to assist parties in meeting their discovery obligations, and specifically covered the Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Grp. case which was the first case to approve the use of TAR. Robin also mentioned the Rio Tinto PLC v. Vale, S.A., et al. case which highlighted how case law has developed to the point that it is “now black letter law that if the producing party wants to utilize TAR for document review, courts will permit it.” 

Recent Case Law Supporting Analytics 

Robin then went on to explain two recent cases supporting TAR and Analytics, which were the Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation and the City of Rockford v. Mallinckrodt. Within these two cases, the court established a detailed TAR Review Protocol that included document culling, repetitive keyword searching that accounts for synonyms and misspellings, and emailing threading to cull out duplicative emails. The court also established a validation or QC process that satisfies the FRCP 26(g)(1) requirement that “made a reasonable effort to assure that the client had provided all the information and documents available that are responsive to the discovery demand.” 

Information Governance 

Another big cost driver Robin and Lia discussed that is specific to corporations is information governance. Information governance refers to a strategic framework for managing information at an organizational level – in a digital context, as well as physical assets, such as devices and printed documents. There are many regional and international standards for managing information at scale, and the regulatory compliance landscape is evolving every year. 

Lia and Robin explained how changes to data privacy regulations have brought about changes to data security policies, including GDPR laws. Changes to regulation mean changes to information governance policies which will in turn drive the cost of information governance in total. 

Data Mapping  

They then explained how a good real-life example of the application of information governance is legal hold. A legal hold (also known as a litigation hold) is a notification sent from an organization’s legal team to employees instructing them not to delete electronically stored information (ESI) or discard paper documents that may be relevant to a new or imminent legal case. 

The most important step before even preserving the data is data mapping.  Data mapping is the process of creating a comprehensive inventory of an organization’s data. Data maps for eDiscovery generally include the following:  

  • Data Locations – where does the data live? How is it stored?  
  • What types of data is your company creating – such as with Teams, Zoom, Slack, etc.   
  • What kind of information is in the data?   
  • Custodian – Who creates the Data 
  • Who is responsible for keeping or deleting the data?   
  • Are the people responsible educated on their duties?  
  • Are there retention policies around the data?  
  • Who is responsible for retrieving the data if needed? 

Having this legal data audit provides you with information to proactively manage your data map, which ultimately manages costs, reduces risk associated with legal data, and creates a roadmap for managing legal data on an on-going basis. 

Throughout their course, Robin and Lia discussed how review has long been a huge expense in the eDiscovery process. However, it is now facing added pressures from new challenges with evolving data types and volumes, data privacy regulations, and considerations for managing remote review teams as well. Even with these new challenges, creating efficiency for your review can still be easily achievable through information governance, data mapping, and legal holds, which directly translates to reduced total costs. Since review is always the greatest cost driver, Lia and Robin mentioned, any opportunity you have to reduce its scope—and, in turn, its costs—should be seized. 

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.

Announcing Acorn’s Justice for Change Partnership with Child Justice

Acorn Legal Solutions Establishes Pro Bono Hosting Partnership through Relativity’s Justice for Change

Acorn will support Justice for Change grant recipients in their use of RelativityOne 

CHICAGO, IL – November 23, 2022 – Acorn Legal Solutions, a woman-led eDiscovery firm headquartered in Chicago, today announced its designation as a Hosting Partner with Relativity’s Justice for Change program. This partnership will enable Acorn to provide hosting, administrative and project management support to grant recipient organizations in their use of RelativityOne.

“We are proud to be a Hosting Partner of the Justice for Change program as it fosters an opportunity for us to have a positive impact on racial and social justice in our communities,” said Lia Majid, CEO at Acorn Legal Solutions. “I am grateful that our team can make a difference by democratizing access to eDiscovery technology and providing support for those organizations in need of it.”

Acorn will be partnering with Maryland-based non-profit Child Justice to provide hosting and production of documents related to a case of child abuse. Child Justice’s cases are often highly document intensive as allegations of abuse often involve multiple expert witnesses as well as medical and mental health records. Acorn will help Child Justice manage and organize this large volume of documents using RelativityOne to present as evidence to the court.

Relativity’s Justice for Change program focuses on increasing access to justice by providing free use of its cloud-based e-discovery product RelativityOne to organizations tackling legal cases and academic and policy research related to racial and social justice. Specifically, Justice for Change has allocated 100TB of RelativityOne data to be used on pro bono projects led by customers or nonprofit organizations. Through the Justice for Change hosting partnership, Acorn is committed to the continuous pursuit of justice through great pro bono work and building important connections with Child Justice.

“We are grateful that Acorn is providing access to RelativityOne in order to defend our client’s case and shed light on other horrific cases of child abuse,” said Eileen King, Founder & Program Director at Child Justice. “The ability to use this technology will not only help our current client but can show other parents in similar situations that limited resources should not prevent them from accessing the justice they deserve.”

Child Justice’s cases often contain thousands of documents, making them quite complex for family court matters. Utilizing RelativityOne will provide the Child Justice team the tools to tag and search documents for multiple issues, utilize Case Dynamics for timelines and chronologies, prepare witnesses and experts for testimony, fulfill discovery requirements, and identify all issues in their case.

“We are thrilled to welcome Acorn as a Justice for Change Hosting Partner. Lia and the team are incredibly supportive of the program’s mission, and it is clear they are dedicated and determined to help organizations like Child Justice succeed in their fight for justice,” said Jaclyn Sattler, Manager for Strategy and Business Operations at Relativity. “Watching organizations like Acorn commit to the program is so inspiring and we can’t wait to see how they continue to leverage their resources for those seeking justice.”

Organizations, including current Relativity customers, doing legal work on behalf of racial justice that would benefit from software to help them organize and search documents and build out a case narrative can apply for free use of our cloud-based e-discovery product, RelativityOne. To learn more, visit: https://www.relativity.com/company/giving-back/justice-for-change/

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. Although capable of serving AmLaw 100 Law Firms and Corporate Legal departments, Acorn primarily works with large regional, midsize national and boutique litigation firms. Acorn provides high-touch, customized litigation support services with a heavy emphasis on seamless communications.

About Child Justice

Child Justice is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that advocates for children’s rights when the courts fail to protect them in cases of abuse and domestic violence. Child Justice is dedicated to ensuring a child’s right to be legally protected from an abusive parent. Working with well-respected law firms, Child Justice provides legal services that protect Maryland children “lost in the system” after exposure to family violence, physical and/or sexual abuse, substance addictions or neglect. Pro Bono attorneys working with Child Justice provide abuse victims with highly skilled legal services for lower court and appellate court cases. These free legal services help to keep children out of the hands of their abusers.

About Relativity

Relativity makes software to help users organize data, discover the truth and act on it. Its SaaS product RelativityOne manages large volumes of data and quickly identifies key issues during litigation and internal investigations. The AI-powered communication surveillance product, Relativity Trace proactively detects regulatory misconduct like insider trading, collusion and other non-compliant behavior. Relativity has more than 300,000 users in approximately 40 countries serving thousands of organizations globally primarily in legal, financial services and government sectors, including the U.S. Department of Justice and 199 of the Am Law 200. Relativity has been named one of Chicago’s Top Workplaces by the Chicago Tribune for 12 consecutive years. Please contact Relativity at sales@relativity.com or visit http://www.relativity.com for more information.