The Power of Two in e-Discovery

Why fish in a pond when you can fish in a lake?

In every e-Discovery matter, you start with a lake full of data. Yet, all too often the only place where you can fish is the small pond of data puddled at the bottom of the review waterfall. What if you could expand your scope and remain in the lake? On three recent matters, BDO helped law firms do just that – and each time with only two reviewers. Let’s take a look at how we did it:


Case Study Background:

  • Three recent investigations: two federal and one state

  • Varying amounts of data: <200,000 emails, >2M emails, and >6M emails

  • Tools utilized: Brainspace and Relativity


BDO's Four-Step Analytical Process:

1. Reduce
De-duplicate, deNIST, and cull by date range, file type, and domain name

2. Investigate
Use tools such as concept searching and visual conceptual clustering to locate the data that matters most

3. Match
Once the focus becomes clear, deploy predictive coding to “find more like this”

4. Verify
Utilize “hedge” technologies such as Boolean searching to evaluate the efficacy of work done in the previous two steps

Bottom Line: In each matter, two (2) core investigative team members performed the analysis and review – not 200, or even 20.

Why is this important?

Winning is about telling the most compelling story. SaaS e-discovery and its powerful analytical capabilities help organizations build that foundation. These tools, coupled with the right support and guidance, can help you and your core investigative and litigation teams:

  • Quickly find the data that matters most

  • Use insights from that data instantly

  • Refocus and redirect your inquiries as quickly and frequently as needed

  • Do the key analytical and review work yourselves, quickly and efficiently

  • Continuously return to the lake of data you started with, not just fish in the small pond of data remaining after a traditional review

At last, instead of only asking “do we have what the other side asked for?”, you can be proactive and consider “what is the best story the data will let us tell?”

Summary
Perform more, faster, and higher quality cycles: Fewer reviewers looking at content offers better quality, greater consistency, and a shorter feedback loop.

Use your core: With only a few reviewers needed, you can point core team members to this work. That means you can evaluate and revise your investigative/litigation strategy as often as you need, and in real-time.

Fish in the lake, not just the pond, with no need to swim up the waterfall: This approach does not rely on cull-by-review to create a small set of “responsive” documents that becomes the only set of documents used for the rest of the investigation or lawsuit. Instead, your team can return to the larger set of data whenever they need, and move off in whatever new direction they need to pursue. It is agile and scalable.