Inside the SFL - Electronic Discovery Edition, December 2009

Balancing Risk & Cost of Self-Collection
Our law firm client was representing a publicly-traded Silicon Valley technology company whose board of directors was being sued over a rejected merger offer. Besides facing a very tight deadline, the law firm told us that its client company wanted to minimize costs by using its internal IT team to perform the data collection. Unfortunately, the IT team didn’t have prior experience conducting data collection for use in litigation, much less existing policies, procedures, or appropriate software tools.

We provided the end client with a written, defensible data collection protocol that their IT department could use to ensure consistency, accuracy and thoroughness during the entire project. We also conducted onsite training and supervised their first few targeted collections. This enabled our law firm client to meet its obligations while satisfying their client’s desire to “self collect” during e-discovery. Our “assisted self collection” cases illustrate our “CPR” motto: Cost control, Process management, and Risk mitigation. Download the full case study and browse dozens of other real-world examples.

Richard Cheng Bolsters SFL Forensics Team With IT and Information Security Background
Our new Senior Manager of Computer Forensics and Electronic Discovery Richard Cheng leverages his experience in information technology (IT), information security and computer forensics to provide thorough, risk-reducing solutions during the collection phase of electronic discovery. He can also help you develop custom, cost-efficient plans by strategizing how to decrease data review and production time throughout the e-discovery process. Formerly with Digital Mountain, Inc. and Kroll, Richard has provided expert testimony as a court-appointed neutral forensic computer and technology authority.

When asked how he applies his experience in the IT industry to forensics and collection, Richard responded, “Computers are complicated devices and collection is a complicated process. Having extensive knowledge about the two makes it easier for me to understand what a client may be dealing with. Once I assess the situation, I can save our clients time and money, as well as minimize risk, because I know the most efficient ways to access and convert the target data.”

As for Richard’s best advice on what actions during collection can help minimize downstream review loads: “This may seem counterintuitive, but proper over-collection can help ease the trouble of missing information by having too focused a collection. This way, SF Legal can get in, get out and our client can get back to business. Our clients need to know where the data lies, but they also need to make sure all devices are taken into account so they avoid the rolling process of having to go through collection over and over again, which throws the schedule off and rapidly increases cost.”

Q&A Corner: Forensics/Collections
Q: What steps should a corporation take to be litigation ready?

Data Forensic Analyst Santiago Barragan:
A: “The most effective corporations have procedures in place that coordinate the necessary actions on behalf of their different departments: for example, IT, legal and human resources. Litigation readiness in the electronic discovery context requires crucial interplay between a companyŠs litigation hold procedures, asset tracking, and data retention and destruction cycles. For large companies with lots of litigation and government or regulatory matters, this can present quite a challenge to manage effectively. Lack of preparation and disorganization costs both the corporation and law firm time and money, and could result in legal sanctions.”

Q: What are the most common mistakes a client should try to avoid to minimize cost and increase efficiency of collection efforts?

Data Forensic Analyst Santiago Barragan:
A: “Lack of proper planning is a common mistake. Make sure your IT or Technology Department has an understanding of what can happen during forensic access. If a client isn’t expecting SF Legal to come in and take over their system, or if they don’t take our investigation seriously, it can be a real disruption for the client and delays our process. Another common mistake is when our only lead into a collection is too broad, such as, “There are a few computers with some information.” We need to know ahead of time if we should examine emails, hard drive data or user-created data. It also helps to know exactly what we should search for. Having a more detailed understanding enables us to give you a better estimate of what needs to be done. We’ll help you find the smoking gun.”

Relativity Tips and Tricks
Having trouble remembering how to do something you saw in training? We’ve recently added a tab to all cases where you’ll find short video tutorials. Created by kCura, they cover many of the basic functions in Relativity and take just a few minutes to watch.
Having a hard time finding your Saved Searches? Relativity will allow you to create and organize your searches into folders with plenty of flexibility by enabling you to nest folders up to four levels. Remember, Saved Searches are dynamic, so as documents are added to your case, you can re-run the exact same search over and over again.
Looking for complete attachment families? If you’re running searches and need to find all document attachments responsive to your search, don’t forget the often overlooked “Include Attachments” drop down. It’s located in the View Bar on the Main Document List page. Using this will ensure entire families are returned, even if all the docs in the family don’t meet your search criteria.
Are you assigning batches to your reviewers? Did you know that Relativity can make sure batches include complete families of documents? We can also group batches by criteria such as custodian at the same time.
Do you need more desktop space? Use Internet Explorer’s F11 key to hide the Internet Explorer navigation bars and gain more room. Pressing F11 again will restore the tool bar.
Here are five reasons why Dave Swider believes in Relativity.

Happy Holidays from SF Legal
Your litigation services requirements don’t stop for the holidays and neither does our support. We'll be open 24/7 as usual. You can rely on us to be here when you need us most. Our best wishes to you and yours this season and throughout the coming year.