Category Archives: collection

August 23, 2022 · 10:36 AM

Proportionality Focus Presents Challenges and Opportunities for eDiscovery Service Providers

By John Patzakis

Proportionality is now the hottest legal issue involving eDiscovery, with the largest number of eDiscovery-related cases in the past year addressing the subject. Relativity eDiscovery attorney David Horrigan recently led an informative webinar “Data Discovery 2022 Mid-Year Update” (access recording here) reporting that 642 published court decisions tackled legal considerations involving proportionality in discovery in the first half of 2022. As only a very small number of cases involve a published decision that we can access online, it is safe to assume that several thousand more cases litigated the proportionality issue during this time period.

Proportionality-based eDiscovery is a goal that all judges and corporate attorneys want to attain. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), parties may discover any non-privileged material that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Lawyers that take full advantage of the proportionality rule can greatly reduce cost, time and risk associated with otherwise inefficient eDiscovery.

While there is keen awareness of proportionality in the legal community, attaining the benefits requires the ability to operationalize workflows as far upstream in the eDiscovery process as possible. For instance, when you’re engaging in data over-collection, which in turn runs up of a lot of human time and processing costs, the ship has largely sailed before you are able to perform early case assessments and data relevancy analysis, as much of the discovery costs have already been incurred at that point. The case law and the Federal Rules provide that the duty to preserve only applies to potentially relevant information, but unless you have the right operational processes in place, you’re losing out on the ability to attain the benefits of proportionality.

An example of a process that effectively applies proportionality on an operational basis would be an iterative exercise to identify relevant custodians, their data sources, applicable data ranges, file types and agreed upon keywords, following the process outlined in McMaster v. Kohl’s Dep’t Stores, Inc., No. 18-13875 (E.D. Mich. July 24, 2020), and Raine Group v. Reign Capital, (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 22, 2022), and collect only the data that is responsive to such specific criterion. Both McMaster and Raine Group decisions apply proportionality at the point of identification and collection, not just production. The latest enterprise collection tech from Relativity and X1 enable such detailed and proportional criteria to be applied in-place, at the point of collection. This reduces the data volume funnel by as much as 98 percent from over-collection models, yet with increased transparency and compliance. In other words, a collection process that is targeted, automated and proportional, instead of one that is overbroad and manual.

However, traditional eDiscovery services typically involve manual collection, followed by manual on-premise hardware-based processing, and finally manual upload to review. These inefficiencies extend projects by often weeks while dramatically increasing cost and risk with purposeful data over-collection and many manual data handoffs. However, the first half of the EDRM involving collection and processing are now far more automated than they were even a few years ago. The purchasers of eDiscovery services and software have clearly noticed and are demanding adaptation from vendors, especially service providers. This new normal of proportionality focus presents a very significant challenge to many service providers.

So how can services firms adapt to this new paradigm? Here are few strategies:

First, services firms should move upstream to focus on information governance to reduce the data funnel as soon as possible. The new generation of eDiscovery technology in the areas of collection, identification, analytics and early data assessment, enables enterprises to operationalize proportionality principles. However, this ideally involves high-end strategic consulting to bring these processes together and operationalize them. This also enables services firms to develop direct and ongoing relationships with corporate law departments, IT and other key corporate stakeholders.

Second, service providers should pivot to managed services (like most other IT consultants) instead of a reactive project-based mindset. Fire drill eDiscovery projects by definition lack any process and result in data-overcollection and many other inefficiencies that thwart the realization of proportionality principles. Establishing a managed service relationship “bakes in” the service provider into an established eDiscovery workflow, including information governance, pre-collection analytics, targeted collection and integrated processing and hosting to enable far more proportional eDiscovery efforts, across multiple matters per client.

Third, services firms should find ways to develop or otherwise acquire their own differentiating tech or establish meaningful partnerships with tech platform providers. These partnerships should entail more than merely using the software, but the development of proprietary workflows or even technical integrations that enable unique service offerings that operationalize proportionality.

At the end of the day, eDiscovery is a technical process that is subject to technology disruption just like any other technology-based services industry. eDiscovery services firms that not only adapt to but embrace this change as a strategic opportunity will be the ones who prosper the most.

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Filed under Best Practices, collection, ECA, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, Preservation & Collection, proportionality, Relativity

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June 28, 2022 · 1:39 PM

Relativity and X1 Publish Updated Joint Legal Whitepaper on ESI Collection Best Practices

By John Patzakis

Relativity and X1 have published an updated joint legal whitepaper addressing full-disk imaging as a disfavored collection practice in civil litigation, with Relativity eDiscovery attorney David Horrigan as the lead author. This paper is a substantive update from the original published a year ago, adding discussion of important and relevant new case law published in the past 12 months. The paper notes that “if the preliminary data from the first five months of 2022 are any indication, we may be seeing that the law of proportionality is becoming more settled — and that courts continue to disfavor full-disk imaging.”

The paper delves into all the legal reasons, including detailed analysis of case law, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Sedona Principles establishing why forensic collection is not required in civil litigation. The paper primarily focuses on the principles of proportionality in its legal analysis as well as case law issued prior to the 2015 amendment to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which gave greater prominence and clarification of the proportionality rules.

One of the recent updated cases included is Besman v. Stafford, where the appellate court reversed and remanded a trial court’s order of a forensic examination of a law firm computer, holding the trial court erred in failing to take precautions to protect the privileged and confidential information on the device. “Generally, courts are reluctant to compel forensic imaging, largely due to the risk that imaging will improperly expose privileged and confidential material contained on the hard drive,” Judge Anita Laster Mays wrote for the appellate court.

This is an important topic as a key problem in eDiscovery that drives inefficiencies and higher costs is that default collection methods often involve full-disk imaging—a forensic examination of an entire computer—when searching for responsive data. As the whitepaper notes, “it turns out full-disk imaging is not required for most eDiscovery collections. In fact, courts often disfavor the practice.”

A copy of the whitepaper can be found here.

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Filed under Best Practices, Case Law, collection, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, proportionality, Relativity

March 15, 2022 · 10:55 AM

Post Pandemic, Corporate eDiscovery Undergoes a Permanent Paradigm Shift

By John Patzakis

While the pandemic disrupted the workplace during its height, it is now becoming clear that a more permanent transformation has taken place. Employees and their electronic information assets are far more geographically dispersed. This is requiring corporate legal departments to rethink how they conduct eDiscovery, as the old model based upon data over-collection is no longer tenable. Instead, corporations are favoring a more targeted approach to ESI collection.

Industry analyst Greg Buckles of the eDiscovery Journal recently provided a good analysis on this topic:

“The sheer volume of raw custodial collections has put pressure on discovery professionals to use an iterative selective collection strategy. That puts the corporate legal team closer to scoping and collection activities than most have been. For too long corporate legal has felt uncomfortable pushing back on overly burdensome or broad discovery requests from opposing or retained counsel. The recent development of proportionality frameworks, guidelines and tools has the potential to empower corporate legal to make defensible cost-risk arguments.”

Buckles further observes that “some of my clients have drastically cut their eDiscovery related expenses through these kinds of initiatives.” He terms this as a “grand enterprise reboot” that “brings (corporate legal) to the table with a fresh perspective.”

Most core eDiscovery costs (outside of attorney review) stem from over-collection of ESI. While direct collection costs can seem inexpensive, law firm Nelson Mullins notes that “over preservation tends to have its own costs relating to storage of large amounts of electronically stored information (ESI) and the resources needed to manage it; leads to increased downstream e-discovery costs associated with collection, processing, and review.”

As outlined by Buckles, proportionality-based eDiscovery is an important principle that all corporate attorneys should be leveraging. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), parties may discover any non-privileged material that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. However, attorneys representing enterprises are essentially flying blind on this analysis when it matters most. Prior to the custodian data being actually collected, processed and analyzed, attorneys do not have any real visibility into the potentially relevant ESI across an organization. This is especially true in regard to unstructured, distributed data, which is invariably the majority of ESI that is ultimately collected in a given matter.

If accurate pre-collection data insight were available to counsel, that game-changing factor would enable counsel to set reasonable discovery limits and ultimately process, host, review and produce much less ESI. Counsel can further use pre-collection proportionality analysis to gather key information, develop a litigation budget, and better manage litigation deadlines. Such insights can also foster cooperation by informing the parties early in the process about where relevant ESI is located, and what keywords and other search parameters can identify and pinpoint relevant ESI.

A solution to these challenges is the utilization of index and search in-place technology. Indexing and search in-place in this context means that a software-based indexing technology is deployed directly onto file servers, laptops or even in the cloud to address cloud-based data sources. This indexing occurs without a bulk data transfer of the data. Once indexed, the searches are performed in a few seconds, with complex Boolean operators, metadata filters and regular expression searches. The searches can be iterated and repeated without limitation, which is critical for large data sets.

But it is important that the technology employed truly enables index-in-place, with the indexes deployed directly onto the laptops, file shares or cloud servers where the data exists. Some providers will market their tools as such, but the indexing and searching actually takes place in their platform at a central location. Data must first be copied and collected off of laptops and file servers and migrated over the network to get the indexing engines. This does not scale for eDiscovery. For information about X1’s index-in-place technology, X1 Enterprise Platform, please visit us here.

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Filed under Best Practices, collection, compliance, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Preservation & Collection, proportionality

December 9, 2020 · 10:44 AM

Traditional eDiscovery Processing is Now Obsolete

By John Patzakis

eDiscovery can be a very expensive process and time consuming when traditional methods are employed. With legacy processes, from the time ESI collection starts, it often takes weeks for the data to finally end up in review. Time is money, and this dramatically increases costs as well as risk.

ESI processing is a dedicated and often expensive step in the EDRM workflow. The majority of ESI processing consists of data culling and filtering, deduplication, text extraction, metadata preservation, and then staging the data for upload into a review platform, often in the form of a load (DAT) file.  Using ESI processing methods that involve on-premise hardware appliances that are not integrated with the collection process and do not integrate with review platforms like Relativity significantly increase cost and time delays. This means practitioners have to spend the often several weeks that are required by other cumbersome solutions through manual collections and multiple hand-offs.

However, the latest in collection technologies will now combine targeted collection with these processing steps that are performed “on the fly” and in the background so that the data is automatically collected, processed and uploaded into a review platform such as Relativity in one fell swoop.

The graphic below is an illustration contrasting the challenges associated with traditional eDiscovery processes, with the far more efficient new paradigm. When you engage in manual collection, and then manual on-premise hardware-based processing, and finally manual upload to review, you are extending the process by often weeks, you are dramatically increasing cost and risk with many manual data handoffs.

Providing a contrast to traditional methods, a recent Relativity webinar featured the integration of the X1 Distributed Discovery platform with its RelativityOne Collect solution. A live demonstration performed by Relativity Product Manager Greg Evans highlighted in real time how the integration dramatically improves the enterprise eDiscovery process by enabling a targeted and efficient search and collection process, with full and integrated ESI processing. Within minutes, data collected from endpoints with X1 is populated straight into a Relativity workspace, fully processed and ready for review, without any human interaction once the collection is started.

So in terms of the big picture, this X1/Relativity integration not only streamlines enterprise ESI collection, but it relegates ESI processing to a completely automated background function as an afterthought. That’s what disruption looks like.

A recording of the X1/Relativity integration webinar can be accessed here.

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December 1, 2020 · 9:53 AM

Relativity Highlights Its X1 Integration for ESI Collection

By John Patzakis

Recently, Relativity hosted a live webinar featuring the integration of the X1 Distributed Discovery platform with its RelativityOne Collect solution. This X1/Relativity integration enables game-changing efficiencies in the eDiscovery process by accelerating speed to review, and providing an end-to-end process from identification through production. As stated by Relativity Chief Product Officer Chris Brown: “Our exciting new partnership with X1 highlights our continued commitment to providing a streamlined user experience from collection to production…RelativityOne users will be able to combine X1’s innovative endpoint technology with the performance of our SaaS platform, eliminating the cumbersome process of manual data hand-offs and allowing them to get to the pertinent data in their case – faster.”

The webinar featured a live demonstration showing X1 quickly collecting data across multiple custodians and seamlessly importing that data into RelativityOne in minutes. Relativity Collect currently supports Office 365 and Slack sources, and Relativity Product Manager Greg Evans noted that “this X1 integration will now enable Relativity Collect to also reach emails and files on laptops, servers,” and other network sources. The webinar outlined how the Relativity/X1 integration streamlines eDiscovery processes by collapsing the many hand-offs built into current EDRM workflows to provide greater speed and defensibility. Evans also said that new normal of web-enabled collections of remote custodians and data sources was a major driver for the Relativity/X1 alliance, as “remote collections now represent 90 percent of all eDiscovery collections happening right now.”

Adam Rogers, of Complete Discovery Source, a customer of both X1 and RelativityOne, highlighted a recent major multi-national litigation where the X1 and Relativity integration was critical to the success of the project. Adam noted that the effort would have taken about 30 days utilizing traditional methods, “but with this X1 and Relativity integration, we cut it down to 3 days, because with X1, we were able to index everything in-place, search, analyze and categorize that data right away, and then release that data to Relativity for review.”

The live demonstration performed by Greg Evans highlighted in real time how the integration improves the enterprise eDiscovery collection and ECA process by enabling a targeted and efficient search and collection process, with immediate pre-collection visibility into custodial data. X1 Distributed Discovery enhances the eDiscovery workflow with integrated culling and deduplication, thereby eliminating the need for expensive and cumbersome electronically stored information (ESI) processing tools. That way, the ESI can be populated straight into Relativity from an X1 collection.

The X1 and Relativity integration addresses several pain points in the existing eDiscovery process. For one, there is currently an inability to quickly and remotely search across and access distributed unstructured data in-place, meaning eDiscovery teams have to spend weeks or even months to collect data as required by other cumbersome solutions. Additionally, using ESI processing methods that involve appliances that are not integrated with the collection will significantly increase cost and time delays.

So in terms of the big picture, with this integration providing a complete platform for efficient data search, eDiscovery and review across the enterprise, organizations will save a lot of time, save a lot of money, and be able to make faster and better decisions. When you accelerate the speed to review and eliminate over-collection, you are going to have much better early insight into your data and increase efficiencies on many levels.

A recording of the X1/Relativity integration webinar can be accessed here.

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