e-Discovery

E-discovery presents some unique and often unfamiliar challenges. It can involve huge volumes of documents and it's easy to become overwhelmed, no matter which side of the process you find yourself on.

If you are required to disclose material, it's important to understand the scope of the disclosure order. What sort of documents are covered by the order? Where are you required to search for in-scope material? Do you have a duty to recover deleted documents? How do you exclude legally or professionally privileged material? How do you ensure the proper disclosure of metadata? How do you ensure that the integrity and completeness of your disclosure process can be verified under scrutiny from the other side? In what format should you disclose material and how should sensitive data be protected during handover?

For most organisations, the requirement to respond to a disclosure order is vanishingly rare. If you do find yourself subject to such an order, therefore, it can represent a journey into unfamiliar and disquieting territory, especially since the consequences of making an incomplete – or overgenerous – disclosure can be costly and problematic.

In such situations, we assist you and your legal representatives to work through the various stages of the e-discovery process. First, we help to determine the exact technical scope of the disclosure order. Once you know what documents you are required to disclose, we deploy software tools to collect that information from your systems with the minimum disruption to your business. We then provide you and your legal representatives with review facilities, which allow you to exclude any documents that fall outside the scope of the disclosure order, and to redact non-disclosable portions of documents as appropriate. Once this is complete, we liaise with the requesting party to agree a technical disclosure format and we package the disclosable material accordingly, ready for handover.

Receiving large volumes of documents in response to a disclosure order can be equally daunting and raises a key question: How do you sift through all of the material disclosed to you and accurately identify relevant documents in a practical timeframe and with finite resources? The answer is through the use of efficient e-discovery technology and a clear, well-structured approach to searching, filtering, reviewing and marking.

Our experience of managing e-discovery projects of all sizes means that you benefit from a wealth of practical expertise. Through the use of efficient planning, mission-specific e-discovery software (such as Intella) and ongoing support and guidance, we can host your e-discovery dataset and facilitate the review process throughout its entire lifecycle, from receiving data to producing bundles of responsive documents.