AccessData Corporation. No More Load Files. Integrating AD ediscovery and Summation to Eliminate Moving Data Between Litigation Support Products

Transcription

1 AccessData Corporation No More Load Files Integrating ediscovery and Summation to Eliminate Moving Data Between Litigation Support Products White Paper August 2010

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction... 1 The Data's Journey Using Traditional Methods... 1 Processing Performance Discrepancies Among Various ediscovery Tools Significantly Increases Risk... 3 The Answer to the Problem is No More Load Files... 4 A Modular Solution to Maintain Flexibility... 6 How Will The Integrated Product Work?... 6 Conclusion... 7

3 Introduction Far from being one linear march through the EDRM, ediscovery is actually an iterative process with three or more cycles of data ingestion, processing, analysis and export. This is a problem, as it is risky, costly and inefficient. Each time information leaves one cycle to begin another, it is exposed to risk and data loss. Also, since new products and services are needed at every phase, costs for law firms and corporations rise with each iteration. Frustration levels also rise as professionals who are trying to focus on practicing law, instead find themselves juggling multiple data load formats, service providers and review platforms. With a view to solving this problem, AccessData is integrating two powerful technologies, AccessData ediscovery and Summation. AccessData ediscovery is used by organizations to address identification, litigation hold, forensic collection, processing, analysis and early case assessment. Law firms rely on Summation for its time-tested review, analysis and production performance, utilizing the technology for both legal review and case data management. By integrating these two industry-leading solutions, AccessData Group will eliminate the need to move data between platforms when addressing the entire ediscovery lifecycle. There will be no more load files, no more data regeneration and no more multiple import/export just a single, seamless solution that will walk users through the entire legal matter lifecycle, from litigation hold to trial. The Data's Journey Using Traditional Methods Traditionally, no matter which tools an organization uses to address the EDRM at a minimum the data must be forensically collected, then processed for internal review and culling, and then that reduced data set must be processed again for import into to a legal review tool for outside counsel. Some organizations use three or four different products, one to address each phase. In this case, the data must be processed each time it moves from one tool to the next. Any analysis, comments and tagging done during the internal review phase are lost when the data is imported to the legal review product. FIGURE 1 illustrates the various stages at which processing must take place. Every time the data is exported for use in a different tool, it must be reprocessed. In addition to the lost analysis that results, each tool processes data differently and this presents additional risk. 1 P a g e

4 FIGURE 1: At each stage, data must be reprocessed, expense is incurred and information and time are lost. Stage One: Internal IT Typically, an organization will forensically collect the ESI, then either process the data in house using a forensic collection product, or send the data to an external service provider for processing and initial culling. Stage Two: Internal Legal After the initial analysis and culling, in-house counsel will review and analyze the ESI, further reducing the data set to include only those documents that in-house counsel deems relevant. In many cases, a separate product is used for this phase of internal review. Moving the data from the collection/ processing product into the internal review product requires the data to be reprocessed. When this happens any analysis that was done during the internal IT phase is lost. In addition, the internal review/eca product will process the data differently, providing a different set of results and different reporting. Stage Three: External Legal Once the data has been reviewed and culled by inside counsel, it must be moved to a legal review product for outside counsel s use. In many cases, an organization works with multiple law firms on a single legal matter. Each one of those law firms may use a different legal review product. The data must be processed, yet again, for import into the legal review products, and again, all analysis can be lost and the processing results may be different. The result is that while outside counsel may have a reduced data set to work with, any analysis, comments or tags applied to the data by the organization's legal department may be gone or altered. At the very least, the corporate party or the law firm must pay a consultant to create a custom load that will port over comments and tagging. Either way, the corporation pays, because the alternative is outside counsel billing the organization for analysis that may have already been performed by internal employees. Purchasing, learning, using and supporting the multiple products used through this process is a costly proposition. The expense is even more daunting when you consider that most organizations rely on service providers in addition to multiple in-house point solutions. Ultimately, the inefficiency of this disparate process leads to increased attorney review costs and wasted time throughout the litigation. 2 P a g e

5 Tagging, comments and analysis may be lost. Tagging, comments and analysis may be lost. Tagging, comments and. analysis may be lost INTERNAL LEGAL Identification Litigation Hold INTERNAL IT Collection Preservation Processing Review Analysis Culling INTERNAL LEGAL ECA Review Analysis Culling EXTERNAL LEGAL Review Analysis Building a Case SERVICE PROVIDER Load File / TIFF / Conversion CASE DATA MANAGEMENT Production Trial Support Process Data Process Data Process Data FIGURE 2: Using more than one technology to address the phases of the EDRM requires data to be reprocessed as it moves from one tool to the next. Processing Performance Discrepancies Among Various ediscovery Tools Significantly Increases Risk Regardless of whether an organization addresses each phase in house or relies on service providers, the tools being used differ for each phase. Therefore, whether using in-house products or service providers, the data must be reprocessed as it moves from one technology to the next. Each product has a different processing engine and, therefore, delivers different processing results. It is not uncommon for an organization to see very different results when comparing data processed with a computer forensics tool with the processing done using an ECA tool. In fact, in several cases, users have found that 10-20% of the data they were expecting to see exposed by the ECA tool was dropped. When this happens, there may be no log to tell the user which documents were dropped or why. In this case, the documents that were accounted for during the IT phase cannot be accessed during the internal legal analysis. Or a great deal of time must be spent "massaging" the data into the ECA tool to compensate for the processing performance discrepancy. A computer forensics product designed for use by law enforcement and Department of Justice agencies will treat data differently from a product that is designed simply for review. When moving from a computer forensics product, typically used to preserve the ESI, into a review or ECA product designed by a vendor with no background in forensic processing, it is important to realize that encrypted and corrupted files are not always indexed or logged, archives are not always broken out, and reporting is not always as extensive. All of these factors affect an organization's ability to maintain chain of custody and ensure comprehensive, defensible review. Given the differences in each product's processing capabilities, it is easy to see how porting data from one product to the next opens the door for spoliation. 3 P a g e

6 The Answer to the Problem is No More Load Files AccessData Group offers two solutions that, combined, address the entire litigation lifecycle, from legal hold to trial. (See FIGURE 3) Those solutions are AccessData () ediscovery and Summation. The integration of these technologies into a single, modular solution eliminates load files and the need to juggle point products. The data will go in one end and out the other, while only being processed once. This single solution model will eliminate the need for a separate ECA vendor or other products and services. Organizations will be able to handle data processing and review in house, when it makes sense to do so. Additionally, all analysis, comments and tagging will remain intact throughout the process, which means work is not duplicated as the data moves from one party to the next. This streamlined process stands to greatly reduce outsourcing fees, legal review fees, software expenses and time spent processing, exporting and shipping data. To provide a clear picture of what each technology delivers, the following reviews the capabilities of each solution and illustrates that, together, these solutions address the entire ediscovery spectrum, from litigation hold to trial. Litigation Hold Identification / Collection Processing / De-duping First-Pass Review / ECA / Culling Analysis / Review Case Data Management / Production ediscovery ediscovery ediscovery ediscovery Summation Summation FIGURE 3: Only AccessData has technology that truly spans the entire ediscovery landscape. Technology Background: ediscovery ediscovery is an industry-leading solution used by corporations, service providers, law firms and government agencies to address the ediscovery lifecycle from litigation hold to generating a load file for common review tools such as Summation. The solution is built on AccessData's flagship technology, Forensic Toolkit (FTK), which is used by law enforcement and DOJ agencies to conduct civil and criminal investigations. Therefore it is designed to provide the most thorough and accurate processing and to provide extensive reporting to illustrate chain-of-custody. In addition, FTK is known to have the industry's leading analysis capabilities and distributed processing functionality. Using ediscovery, organizations can address the following phases: Litigation Hold The litigation hold functionality in ediscovery is wizard-driven, guiding users through the process of creating and managing holds. When creating a notification, users can include interview questions, attach standard documentation and notify IT and other required entities. Custodians and IT can sign into a secure portal to confirm holds and view the real-time status of individual holds. Hold parameters can be changed at any time throughout the litigation process. 4 P a g e

7 Automated Identification, Forensic Collection and Preservation ediscovery allows organizations to manage custodians and information assets, as well as perform early case assessment audits to gain a clear understanding of the data universe prior to collection. It enables forensic collection from workstations, laptops, network shares, servers and popular structured data repositories (e.g., SharePoint, EnterpriseVault, Documentum, Oracle URM and OpenText). Collections can encompass all custodian-created data or be targeted, cull-at-the-source collections that employ advanced searching and filtering options across custodians and shared data sources. Previously executed collections can be reused and associated with multiple legal matters. Incremental collection capabilities allow users to collect only the data that has changed from a previous collection, so an organization can meet easily the collection requirements of ongoing litigation. In addition, the technology enables an organization to collect ESI from travelling custodians, without waiting for them to be logged into the corporate network. ediscovery has "Smart Restart" functionality that ensures a collection picks up from where it left off in the event that a custodian temporarily goes offline or a collection operation is interrupted. Processing and Deduplication The solution processes data as it is collected, while maintaining chain of custody, and leverages distributed processing capabilities to dramatically reduce processing time. Distributed processing allows the system to leverage multiple computers to process the data without breaking it up into smaller batches. During processing, data is automatically de-nisted and indexed. Archives are opened, data is categorized and non-searchable items are flagged. and ESI can be deduplicated across the legal matter or by custodian. Image files can be indexed with the built-in OCR capability, eliminating the need for a third-party OCR tool. Finally, ediscovery has full conversion / export capabilities to generate load files/tiffs. Early Case Assessment / Culling / First-Pass Review Leveraging ediscovery's SilverLight web interface with native review, users are able to analyze data collaboratively, in real time. Quick custom tagging and bookmarking, as well as custom data views and extensive search reporting, allow for the most efficient review process. ediscovery offers advanced searching options and rich filtering by custodian, data source, category, document metadata and type. The advanced search options include fuzzy, proximity, related words, stemming, phonic, wildcard and concept. Search hit highlighting in 400+ supported data types in both natural and text view allows the user to quickly focus on relevant content. Technology Background: Summation Summation is an award-winning litigation support technology. More than 100,000 users rely on Summation to analyze and organize every aspect of the discovery process. Combining industry-leading case data management capabilities with advanced search functionality in an easy-to-use interface, Summation technology allows users to maintain control over case materials with minimal effort. Attorney Review & Analysis Summation allows legal professionals to review, search, and analyze all types of litigation data, including scanned documents, ediscovery, transcripts, pleadings and more. Supporting cases and clients of all sizes, Summation is fully scalable, available behind the firewall or in the cloud, and as a self-hosted solution. Summation s portability allows users to work where they need to and share case information across geographically disparate teams. Summation review products offer the ability to OCR or petrify (TIFF) documents on the fly, an included image viewer and near native viewer, and the ability to tag, folder and create review sets. Our newest 5 P a g e

8 software release includes advanced search functionality, such as concept search, faceted search and search result ranking by relevance, as well as threading and near duplicate analysis. Production & Case Data Management Summation gives the user the ability to manage and organize every aspect of the litigation process. Its powerful case management tools include case outlining, deposition outlining, and case player and event tracking. Summation also includes industry-leading transcript management functionality, giving users tools to search, annotate, and organize transcripts at no extra charge. Summation s flexible production tools let users create rolling production sets, Add/Subtract documents at anytime, renumber at anytime, and ultimately burn in redactions and stamps. After creating a production set, Summation users can share sets with external users, and even non-summation users, in a variety of ways. A Modular Solution to Maintain Flexibility In order to meet the needs of AccessData's broad customer base, this integrated, soup-to-nuts solution will be modular. Organizations and law firms will be able to purchase the pieces they need to perform their required tasks. However, organizations can build upon their existing solutions as their needs grow. Therefore, a law firm may still only purchase the legal review and case data management capabilities. In addition, these individual modules will remain compatible with other common ediscovery tools. So, for example, if an organization prefers to use PSS Atlas for litigation hold, AccessData's solution will continue to integrate with that technology. If an ediscovery user chooses to use Concordance for review, ediscovery will continue to provide to a compatible load file for that product. Finally, it is unrealistic to assume that an organization will never have to rely on a service provider again. It is common for companies to be faced with a fast-moving legal matter and limited internal resources. This is why AccessData makes its ediscovery technology available to service providers to facilitate a streamlined process between companies that use technologies and their outside vendors/partners. For example, the real-time, collaborative review capabilities of AccessData technology enables service providers, outside counsel and corporate legal departments to work together seamlessly, regardless of location. ediscovery is currently being use by service providers to cater to clients using ediscovery in house. (See Case Study: UnitedLex at The flexibility of this solution will facilitate a corporate-driven model, in which corporations dictate to their vendors/partners which platforms shall be used. This will enable all parties to standardize from the beginning of litigation and make for a more efficient, cost-effective process. How Will The Integrated Product Work? AccessData technology is known for its ability to scale to handle massive data sets, its ease of use and its collaborative analysis capabilities. Furthermore, AccessData is known for FTK, the standard computer forensics technology, used by law enforcement around the world and DOJ agencies. FTK is the foundation upon which AccessData solutions are built, and it delivers distributed processing, superior analysis and extensive reporting. This integrated solution will be no different in that both the ediscovery piece and the Summation piece will be built on the battle-tested and trusted FTK platform. Therefore, the product will have the same look and feel throughout, but will embody the mature, robust functionality of Summation for review, case data management and production. 6 P a g e

9 Organizations and their law firms will both see greater time efficiency and cost savings by using technology that not only spans the ediscovery landscape, but is an established industry leader at each phase. Organizations will be able to seamlessly deliver data to their law firms, with all analysis, notes, bookmarking and tagging intact. This will greatly reduce the amount of duplicate work that must be done and eliminate the need to create custom loads, thereby reducing legal review and service provider fees. Law firms will benefit from enhanced client communication, the ability to see what the client is seeing and the ability to utilize any tagging or categorization the organization performed before it handed off the information. It is important to note that during the process of integrating these two powerful technologies, AccessData will continue to enhance the Summation product line, making iblaze, Summation Enterprise and CaseVantage, more stable and more scalable with a richer set of capabilities. These continued product enhancements are built into the roadmap and aid in creating the integrated solution that is AccessData's vision. AccessData Technology No need to re-process data to move between tools. Seamless data flow from litigation hold to trial. Desktops Desktops Data Repositories Client Analytics View Web Server Client Web View CaseVantage / iblaze Integrated Collection Workers Application Server Servers Processing Cluster Centralized Database FIGURE 4: Integrated solution architecture. Conclusion AccessData and Summation, both 20+ year industry veterans, are now one company. AccessData has been at the forefront of the digital investigations evolution, since its founding. AccessData will continue its tradition of being a digital investigations innovator by creating a new ediscovery paradigm the single solution model of addressing ediscovery no load files, no lost work, no wasted time and no wasted money. 7 P a g e