Inside the SFL - Electronic Discovery Edition, January 2010

SF Legal’s Less-is-More Approach to Document Review Saves Time and Money
Our client was under significant time pressure to produce their client’s documents. Their original strategy was to load documents received from the corporate client into Relativity, search to identify potential privilege and review the privileged documents. Initially, the plan was seamless, but then documents began arriving more rapidly and their review team was quickly falling behind on production obligations. SF Legal’s project managers suggested ways to reduce the number of documents needing direct examination and proposed a review methodology that enabled our client to meet production deadlines and save money. Read the full case study and visit our website to read dozens of other real-world examples. Our less-is-more approach helps illustrate our CPR motto: Cost control, Process management, and Risk mitigation. Call us at 415-392-2900 or visit www.sanfranciscolegal.com and start breathing easier today.

Client Data Securely Transferred through Safe Harbor
During e-discovery, the transfer of data is essential. If you’re transferring data from Europe, the different privacy standards can challenge the international legality of those transmissions. That’s why we recently certified our compliance with the United States Department of Commerce and European Union Safe Harbor Framework to ensure the secure transfer of your data between the U.S. and the European Union. The Safe Harbor Framework was developed to reconcile the discrepant approaches to privacy between the U.S. and the E.U. and facilitate transatlantic transfer of data. More information about the U.S.-European Union Safe Harbor program is available at http://export.gov/safeharbor/index.asp.

Q&A Corner: Project Management
Q: How can a client tell if they have an effective project management team?

Senior Project Manager Anne Greifenstein:
A: “The biggest indicator of whether your project management team is effective is to note if they offer information before you know you need it. In ideal circumstances, you shouldn’t have to ask for information. If you do, you should expect to get a timely and accurate response. Also, in this industry there’s the potential for overlooking many “little” details at the beginning of a project. For example, referring to ‘Search 1’ and ‘Search 2’ instead of naming your volumes so that they are relevant to your case can increase time and cost for both you and your clients once you are deep into the project. As an SF Legal project manager, I help clients see the whole project and prioritize what to do through out the process. That helps you avoid bumps along the way and saves your client money as well.”

Relativity Tips and Tricks
Are you searching for your searches? - Did you know that you can build folders to organize your searches in the Advanced and Saved Searches tree? You can build folders up to four levels deep to help keep yourself organized.

More than just a slipsheet: When you’re printing documents from the main document list, you can have one of your coding layouts printed on the slipsheets. It will display any information contained on the layout.

Are you still wrestling with privilege logs? - If so, we can build a View that shows the fields you need to provide to opposing counsel. You’ll be able to export the View as an Excel spreadsheet and have your privilege log ready to go in a heartbeat.

Filter Operator of the Month: When you need to find documents between two dates, use the between operator to do so. For example, to find documents between 1/1/10 and 1/25/10, enter “1/1/10 between 1/25/10” in the filter box above the date field you’re searching. In Advanced and Saved Searches, you can select a between operator from the dropdown as you create your search.

We’ll Help You Breathe A Little Easier Is the electronic discovery process suffocating you with disorganization, unnecessary risk, cost over-runs and confusing software choices? SF Legal’s “CPR” is designed to help clients breathe easier through e-discovery stress.

• “C” in CPR is cost control: we deliver at least 30 percent lower total-cost solutions than our competition, without compromising the quality of our service. And now with our new co-location facility and Relativity ticketing system, we’ll show you even more ways to reduce costs.
• “P” stands for process management: our outstanding project management team and unique process reporting systems ensure that you’re always using the most efficient e-discovery processes available.
• “R” stands for risk management: by controlling and documenting the data trail from initial collection all the way through to production, we ensure there won’t be any unexpected e-discovery surprises.