Limited time to process and review, foreign languages too… no problem. Alexander Carte explains LDM’s technology solution to a leading global law firm.

A top-ten global law firm and its client, a large international transportation company, approached LDM to assist with the provisions for a response to multiple governmental investigations in multiple jurisdictions and potential litigation related to the same. The data was in hard copy and electronic format and located in dozens of offices worldwide, from sources as varied as personal files and computers to server and network data.

Challenges

Recover vast amounts of electronic data in multiple locations on varied systems throughout the company, whilst maintaining the potential to use the captured data as evidence if necessary. Acquire large volumes of paper documents in multiple locations and process for ease and speed of review. Achieve the two goals above whilst causing minimal disruption to the business practices and operations of the company. In addition, the documents had to be processed to allow for review and searching in more than a dozen languages, some of which used non-Western character sets. Initial time lines required that processing and review be completed in a total time frame of approximately six months, with the vast majority needing to be completed within the last three months. European data privacy concerns required data to be retained in the EU. Review centres were to be de-localised to make resources available to complete the task on time.

Solution

LDM provided consulting services to both the firm and the corporate client at the beginning to help plan the scope and logistics of the project whilst ensuring that the process was driven by the goals and requirements of the end result. LDM accompanied lawyers from the firm throughout the world during the interview and identification process of the project and collected documents and data on the spot to be added to the review database. LDM worked on-site to minimise disruption to business activities, in some cases returning computers and documents within two hours so that personnel could continue to work. At every stage of this process, LDM explained and reassured employees about the instructions to make the whole collection run as smoothly as possible. During the collection/
interview stage of the process, LDM advisors helped the firm and the client identify a potential serious non-compliance issue, the identification of which helped the client inform the appropriate authorities immediately and mitigate any potential disputes.

LDM processed terabytes of electronic data, and hundreds of thousands of pages of paper documents into electronic format for review, including OCR and text of the same in multiple languages to facilitate searching across the entire population, which ended up being several million documents. Data with non-Western character file names, file paths and contents were encountered routinely and processed without any affect on time line.

A web-based review platform was set up to access the database so lawyers in several countries could work on review simultaneously and in a collaborative fashion. The data was processed and hosted in the EU to comply with EU privacy concerns and precautions were setup to make sure no data left the EU. LDM provided regular reports in regards to new data loaded and helped manage the workflow for the lawyers on the same to ensure that review continued at a steady pace. The company had relevant data located on proprietary systems that required LDM technical staff to prepare special means to allow for review.

During the course of the review, it became apparent to reviewing lawyers that forensic investigation services on certain PCs would be required to establish provenance and activities with some data. LDM’s forensic investigators recovered information, which was of interest to the lawyers, hidden on the hard drives of PCs, which helped shape the review going forward. Review was completed on time and LDM was personally thanked by the firm and the client for their assistance on the matter.

Business benefits

• Cost savings to firm and client of hundreds of hours because only relevant documents collected and processed. Potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds.
• Review deadlines met despite projection at start that it would be nearly impossible.
• Centralised review meant resources could be used for multiple languages across several worldwide offices.

Alexander Carte, LDM operations manager, Europe