Early Case Assessment: The Benefit Is in the Eye of the...

Early Case Assessment: The Benefit Is in the Eye of the

BeholderScott M. Cohen

Director, E-Discovery Support Services | Winston & Strawn LLP

Tom MorriseySr. Director, IT Litigation | Purdue Pharma LP

Chuck KellnerE-Discovery Strategist

Greg BucklesConsultant | Reason-eD LLC | eDiscoveryJournal

Duane Lites (Moderator)Director, Litigation Support | Jackson Walker LLP

What is early case assessment? Depending on how you look at it, ECA can

mean several things.

• Law Firm

• Corporate

• Vendor

• Consultant

How Do You Define ECA?

Law Firm

How Do You Define ECA?

• Initial consideration of the facts of the case, its legal merits, possible defensive/offensive strategies and its potential for business interruption.

• Analysis and evaluation of the electronically stored information collected (or to be collected) during the discovery phase of litigation

Corporate

How Do You Define ECA?

• Risk Assessment• Value to the Company• Reduction in scope

Consultant

How Do You Define ECA?

• Identification as a business process

• Workflow-Defined, documented and tested

• Technology to search and analyze in the wild

• Letting the ESI speak for itself

Service Provider

How Do You Define ECA?

A process by which a client and its legal team can:

• Evaluate potential risks of litigation based upon identifiable key facts

• Evaluate cost of discovery and other cost factors of the litigation

• Utilize metrics to help minimize litigation size, cost and risk.

ECA - Corporate

Goal / Objective

• Risk Assessment

• Identify value of case from a business perspective

• Bet the Business

ECA - Corporate

Tools / Methods

• Know your business (or that of your client)

• Historical data can provide insight

• Define/Contain Scope

• Assess costs of case

Benefits

ECA – Corporate

• Reduce scope and thereby reduce spend…

Effective Legal Holds on Email Archive

ECA - Consultant

Goal / Objective

Tools / Methods

• Targeted searches

• Frequency reports

• Sampling

• Criteria tests

Hold potential relevant (15%)

vs.

All custodial email (100%)

Minimize business/IT impact

ECA - Consultant

Benefits

ClientClient’’s Goals s Goals

& Strategy& Strategy

Identify Key Identify Key

FactsFacts

Costs, Metrics Costs, Metrics

& Reports& Reports

Defensible Defensible

Search Search

MethodologyMethodology

Goals for ECA Service Provider

ECA Vendor Tools and Methods

Tightly Integrated WorkflowTightly Integrated WorkflowTightly Integrated Workflow

Iterative & Documented Search

Iterative & Iterative &

Documented Documented

SearchSearch

Client & IT Client & IT

Interview Interview

SkillsSkills

• Connectors

• DeNISTing

• Processing

• Text Extraction

• Indexing

• Formatting

• Forensic Transparency

• ConnectorsConnectors

•• DeNISTingDeNISTing

•• ProcessingProcessing

•• Text ExtractionText Extraction

•• IndexingIndexing

•• FormattingFormatting

•• Forensic Forensic

TransparencyTransparency

ECA – Service Provider

Benefits

Legal team uses several tools and skills to execute this process including:

• Interview skills

• Information management and database tools

• Analytical tools, including cost and search analysis

• Negotiation skills

Goal / Objective

ECA – Law Firm

Given an enormous amount of corporate

server data, leverage ECA software tools

and methodologies to defensibly identify

potentially relevant, non-privileged ESI while

eliminating non-relevant material in support

of regulatory investigation.

Tools / Methods

ECA – Law Firm

ECA product used to perform:

• Key term/phrase analysis

• Email analysis (domain, conversations, date distribution)

• Custodian analysis

• De-nisting

• File-type filtering

Benefits

ECA – Law Firm

• Over 90 % reduction in review volume resulting in substantial time and cost savings

• Fast identification of potentially privileged documents

• Identification of additional custodians based upon initial searches

Questions

Early Case Assessment: The Benefit Is in the Eye of the

BeholderScott M. Cohen

Director, E-Discovery Support Services | Winston & Strawn LLPscohen@winston.com

Tom MorriseySr. Director, IT Litigation | Purdue Pharma LP

Tom.Morrissey@pharma.com

Chuck KellnerE-Discovery Strategist

chuckkellner@hotmail.com

Greg BucklesConsultant | Reason-eD LLC | eDiscoveryJournal

Greg@Reason-ed.com

Duane Lites (Moderator)Director, Litigation Support | Jackson Walker LLP

dlites@jw.com