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.

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.

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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.

Business Considerations for COVID Era Workplaces Related to Employment Law and eDiscovery

With the outbreak of COVID-19, all have been impacted, particularly in the workplace. Many have been furloughed or laid off. Others have transitioned to work-from-home, and essential workers have had to find ways to safely continue to go to their workplaces. All of these situations create some new and unique questions related to employment law and related changes to the eDiscovery landscape. Below, we will examine some of those questions and some impacts, and even some eDiscovery related solutions that employers and employees should be thinking about, especially as many now move forward with returning to work or make the decision to permanently work remotely.

Employment Law Impact

Logistics of Managing Returning Workers

As employees return to the physical workplace, employers will have several considerations related to keeping those employees safe. How can space be reconfigured to maintain proper social distancing, and what rules or standards need to be adjusted to ensure the same? Further restrictions may be mandated by state and local phases/orders. In locations where there is shared workspace or office space, employers may consider in-person work on alternating days or weeks or on staggered schedules to avoid overcrowding that better accommodate proper physical distancing. Also, in the event that an employer decides to require symptom checks, a few things must be considered. First, what type(s) of checks (temperature, symptom questionnaire) will be done and how often? Second, who will be responsible for the documentation and administration? Finally, how will the records be maintained?

Employers should also consider limiting or restricting access to common and shared areas in the workplace such as break rooms, conference rooms, elevators, and restrooms. If an employer chooses to limit access to break rooms, they should ensure that employees have alternative options to take uninterrupted breaks and have access to spaces to have lunch. Businesses located in office buildings must also consider things such as how employees can maintain social distancing while taking elevators. Limitations for maximum persons in areas such as restrooms may also be necessary. Further, the CDC has issued some guidelines in order to mitigate the chances of spreading COVID-19 in the workplace:

  • wearing masks/face coverings where social distancing is not possible or unlikely to be effective;
  • social distancing during shift changes/breaks;
  • instructing employees not to use other employees’ workspaces or equipment;
  • displaying markings or signs reminding customers and employees to maintain physical distancing;
  • holding fewer in-person meetings and using increased conference calls or video conferences.

    • Employees Who Refuse to Return Due to Safety Concerns

    While employers have the right to force employees to return to work, there is likely to be some resistance from some employees. Employers should consider several things in these situations, including the following: does the employee’s work require them to be onsite; can the employee effectively perform their job from home; and are certain employees at elevated risk due to underlying conditions. Even when employees are not considered to have elevated risk or underlying conditions if they contract COVID-19, some employees may be reluctant or may even refuse to return to work because of fear for health and safety or childcare/school obligations. Clear communication and flexibility (when practical) are imperative in these situations.

    Depending on the size of the workforce, there could also be legal implications involved. Employers with fewer than 500 employees may be required to provide paid or partially paid leave to employees who are unable to return to work under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).[1] Employers who have more than 500 employees or are exempted from the FFCRA may still be required to provide medical leave based on laws in their jurisdictions. They may also be required to provide leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the ADA, or other state or local law equivalents. Employers should develop uniform criteria to consider when evaluating requests for leave to avoid potential claims of unfair treatment or discrimination.

    Changes in eDiscovery

    With the shift from business as usual in the work environment, there are many eDiscovery related considerations that should be addressed. We will look at a few of them here. First, with the transition away from the office to working from home, there has been an uptick in ESI data sources that were previously less utilized. The increase in the use of various messaging applications, video conferencing, and more traditional communication methods potentially create a data set that is exponentially larger and disparate using traditional eDiscovery methodologies. [2] Another related potential concern for employers and employees is the hours that non-exempt employees work from home. In the event that standard work hours are not being enforced for at-home-work, the potential for wage and hour claims arise. It is important that employers know the hours non-exempt employees are expected to be working and to ensure that those hours are being enforced.

    The combination of these two potential issues (disparate communication tools and tracking work hours) can present unique issues in stored data sets, as gaps in the stories may be unintentionally created. In order to fill this gap, the use of artificial intelligence tools could be a viable option. The use of the right AI in the right ways can normalize varied communications and provide timelines and patterns of those communications giving the whole picture of the communications, the communicators, and the timelines of those communications. Further, the proper use of the right tools allows for the identification of patterns and anomalies in communications and timelines thereof. [3]

    The reopening of workplaces is not without challenges; however, with proper planning, open and clear communication, and utilization of the right tools, it can be done safely and efficiently. Space, particularly shared spaces, may need to be configured to allow for proper distancing. Determinations about testing or other guidelines need to be made, communicated, and enforced. Flexibility with employee schedules and concerns need to be addressed directly and clearly. Finally, new or expanding disparate sources of ESI need to be considered, and determinations on how to handle these data, including the use of AI, should be discussed and reviewed.

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    [1] If an employee is subject to a federal, state, or local quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19; has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine because of COVID-19; is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19: is caring for an individual subject or advised to quarantine or isolation; is caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed, or child care provider is unavailable, due to COVID-19 precautions.

    [2] For more on the implications of Zoom, see the article by Acorn’s Amanda Cook: https://blog.aceds.org/ediscovery-considerations-with-business-use-of-zoom/

    [3] For questions about the use of AI, please reach out to me or our team directly.

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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. 

    Three Things That Actually Set eDiscovery Providers Apart

    For those of you that don’t know my background, I started off in eDiscovery technology sales and switched over to services when I joined the Acorn team. When I was on the technology side of the business, I thought that all Relativity service providers in this space were essentially the same. The only differences were the people and the eDiscovery software to which they had access. The longer I’ve been in the services side of the business, the more I realized that while service providers may seem the same, there are three key factors that actually set them apart.

    Finding the Correct Type of Vendor

    When I was on the tech side of eDiscovery, clients finding the correct type of service provider is something that seemed particularly relevant when it came to international cases. There were corporations that would only focus on which service providers had our product and had locations in multiple countries where the corporation also had offices. The more I have been on the services side, the more I realized that finding the correct match matters. Besides international vendors, a lot of vendors will concentrate on infrastructure as a service or specialize in assisting corporations in general, while others concentrate solely on AM100 law firms or Fortune 500 corporations. The reason why it’s important to know this, is their standard operating procedures and workflows are designed with this type of customer in mind.

    At Acorn, we are built from the ground up to be the outsourced litigations support team for regional powerhouse law firms and national mid-sized firms. This includes everything from our invoicing procedures, to the technologies we utilized, to the workflows we implement. Acorn understands that this group is often going against AM100 firms, but they don’t have the same resources that their competitors might have. That is where Acorn comes in to bridge that gap and provide our clients with the same, if not better, arsenal of tools and services at their disposal.

    Finding the Correct Type of Vendor

    When moving from technology to services, I knew that quality project managers were essentially. Part of the reason I chose Acorn over some of the other offers that I had, is because I believed in their project managers so much. What I initially overlooked, but realized is very important, is matching the correct project manager to the client. One reason why this is so important is matching personalities. Any client is going to have a better experience if they can personally connect to the people that they work with. This isn’t saying that not everyone in this industry is likable, its more about knowing which personalities will mesh best together. It’s also my job and the job of the project manager to know what the possible technologies are that can best serve the client and will be beneficial in the future to help with common issues the firm faces. When it comes to using technology, experience matters, and I want my customers to have the best possible experience.

    Knowing Your Customers

    Having the whole team know your clients is an important part of providing good customer service. For service providers to be successful, they must know their biggest clients inside and out. What I’ve noticed since switching over is that there are a lot of large firms and corporations that aren’t their vendors biggest client. In a post article, there were several comments on how leadership in some organizations put an emphasis on efficiency instead of customer service. Unfortunately, this efficiency can lead to clients having different project managers and people working on their cases for every case. It becomes hard to know your client if you only have them for one case. This is the main reason why we have dedicated project managers for our clients. Having myself and the project manager truly understand the client’s needs, personalities, preferences, and power structure allows us to provide better service.

    Concluding Thoughts

    This all seems straightforward in concept, but the challenge is putting it to practice consistently with good execution. So, as you contemplate relationships with eDiscovery vendors, you might want to ask questions like: How do you evaluate project managers’ technical and client-facing skills during recruiting? What sort of on-going education programs do you offer your project managers and business development managers? Does your vendor have integrated service delivery processes for technical, client management and accounting teams? What sort of on-going education program does your vendor offer your clients? Does your vendor have standard operating procedures around management of the entire project portfolio with you, in addition to each individual project? Where do you rank in importance as a client for your vendor?

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    Be Sure to Follow Me 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. 

    How to Prevent Yourself from Going Stir Crazy, While Also Being Productive

    The Stay at Home Order has been tough for everyone. Parents with older kids are making them go stir crazy, parents with younger kids are finding it hard to work from home, and divorce attorneys are expecting divorce rates to sky rocket after the lock down is over.

    I’m in a different boat than most. As a bachelor, I’m staying at home by myself. At first, the Stay at Home Order wasn’t too bad. I got to finish some books, catch up on some TV I’ve had recorded, and binge watch my favorite streaming platforms. After a month, I streamed every show I’ve ever wanted to watch, read every book I haven’t yet read in my condo, and started to do arts and crafts (Cast Away was one of the movies I streamed). I was running out of activities, so recently, I began compiling some things to do to keep from going stir crazy while remaining productive.



    1) Watch Webinars and Listen to Podcasts

    I have always enjoyed watching webinars because I want to learn as much as possible. What new technologies are out there, what workflows are people implementing, what are new trends that I may not be seeing, to name a few. The problem is, for a lot of the webinars I sign up for I end up being too busy and by the time things cool down, I forget that I even signed up. Here are some of my go to places for webinars, but I’d love to hear if you have more.

    • ACEDS has more webinars than you’ll know what to do with, especially since local chapters have had to postpone their meetings and events.
    • The EDRM has also been putting out a lot of webinars, and has over 100 recorded webinars that you are easily accessible to look back on.
    • Acorn holds weekly events, including round tables and mock trials with industry thought leaders as a part of our 20% Interaction Time series.
    But, truth be told, I have NEVER listened to a podcast but have always been intrigued by the medium. Here are some podcasts that have been recommended to me that I’m going to be catching up on during the next few weeks.

    • Stellar Women in eDiscovery is a monthly podcast, hosted by Relativity, spotlighting and celebrating female leaders in the industry we know and love.
    • ILTA has been publishing insightful content for years now, and I’m told that their podcast is no different.
    • Uncivil Procedure is a monthly podcast revolving around informal discussions on recent and relevant case law.

    2) Study for Certifications

    Since I’ve been in eDiscovery, I’ve always loved the idea of obtaining certifications, but it has always been one of those things that I’ve told myself that I’ll get to another day. 6 months later, it was still low on my list of priorities. With an abundance of free time, I think my calling has finally come to start studying. Relativity seems to be on the same page as me and has started offering free training and certifications. I have my eye on the Relativity Certified Sales Pro Certification but there’s an abundance of other options that I’m sure will pique your interest, such as:

    • ACEDS is the industry standard when it comes to certifications. I’ve always told myself that I was going to study for it by now I finally have time.
    • Relativity has new free resources to keep your eDiscovery skills up to par while you’re at home.

    3) Attend Virtual Coffees, Lunches and Happy Hours

    Social interaction is essential for your mental well being. For those of us living by ourselves right now, it’s more important than ever. Whether it’s doing video calls with your friends, family or colleagues, I highly recommend reaching out in any way you can. I’ve started holding standing Happy Hours every Wednesday night for my industry peers, friends and family every week. This month I launched my first Virtual Happy Hour to reconnect with my industry colleagues and peers. I attended (and hosted), and if I do say so myself, it was a lot of fun connecting with numerous old and new faces and sharing how we’ve been doing inside and outside the “office”. Beyond Happy Hours, my company Acorn has set up a full roster of events to allow our community to stay connected which all can be found on Acorn’s 20% Interaction Time homepage. A few of the events are:

    • Top Chef Madness: Weekly Discussions with Lia Majid
    • Coffee with Colleagues with Zef Deda
    • Office Hours with our Project Management Team
    But if you had to choose one, stop by my Virtual Happy Hour on Wednesdays at 6:00pm CT so it’s not just Wilson and I stranded.

    This is a tough time for everyone, and I’m hoping that everyone out there is staying safe and healthy, mentally and physically. I’m going to try to use this time to be as productive as possible, learning as much as possible. If anyone wants to connect, feel free to connected with me and we can set something up or collaborate to hold future events.

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    Be Sure to Follow Me 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.