Preparing for Trial Quickly and Effectively
A company defending itself against a class action lawsuit had produced 8 million pages of documents to the plaintiffs based on a set of agreed-upon custodians and keywords. The company now needed to conduct a fast, accurate review of the documents it had delivered to determine which might support or undermine the other parties’ claims. Facing significant personnel, management, and training costs, as well as limited time to prepare for trial, the firm needed to transform its process.
A Solution That Fit
Our team worked closely with the client’s attorneys to define document review objectives and prioritize case issues. Together we established a review and delivery timeline that conformed to the trial schedule but allowed for flexibility around the client’s deposition and case preparation needs. Based on our client’s requirements, we then designed a process to quickly and accurately review the entire document set.
Faster Performance, More Effective Review
Once our date-certain review process was in place, the client simply sent us electronic copies of the documents—all 8 million pages—and we conducted the review. We returned to the client codes for the documents identified as relevant to each issue along with highlighted passages in each document that triggered the relevance assessments. We supplemented this work product with an array of analytical case preparation reports. All our results integrated seamlessly into the litigation team’s workflow and the client’s existing IT infrastructure.
Significant Results
Our review reduced the risk of missing relevant information by more than 90 percent, as shown by a parallel evaluation of the client’s standard manual review. We also saved our client 60 percent—$7 million—on review costs by eliminating the need for an in-house document review team and by halving the review time. Finally, we enabled our client to review document subsets for multiple issues and to conduct ad hoc reviews as case issues evolved.
We helped our client surmount an overwhelming document review challenge with a streamlined, flexible process that better prepared the case team for trial.
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