eDiscovery Management

The Need to Handle eDiscovery with an Objective Third-Party

When collecting information that has the potential to be used in a legal proceeding, it’s important to ensure the extraction, preservation and storage of electronic information can be upheld.

While self-collection is an option, it also comes with its share of issues. Law firms who choose to have their in-house IT department must take critical and necessary steps to ensure their ESI is collected objectively and ethically.

Using a neutral, objective, third-party eDiscovery company allows you to not only adhere to forensic standards, but also provide documentation to ensure data was properly preserved.

What to Look For in eDiscovery Companies

eDiscovery specialists have experience in both technology and computer forensics. This allows these professionals to not only process the data in an efficient way, but to also produce the relevant, essential information you need for your investigations and litigation.

It is important to work with certified eDiscovery companies and specialists. Their investigative approach to preserving your clients’ data and meeting evidence rules is critical when it comes to seeking resolution in legal matters. This ensures that you stay within scope and proportionality without compromising the integrity that the evidence rules provide, giving you a powerful advantage in civil litigation.

Here are some more tips when considering an eDiscovery provider:

• Research on the eDiscovery provider’s features.
  While all eDiscovery platforms can pretty much do every discovery feature, some excel at specific components more than others. As such, you need to know what the provider's strengths are, as well as their limitations. Use this information to subsequently select the one that best matches your own firm’s requirements.
• Figure out the scope of service that you need.
  There are a wide variety of support services that an eDiscovery company can provide, and you'll need to pick one that fulfills your own needs. Do you only need collection and processing services, or do you require full litigation support? The scope of your needs will play a role in deciding which company is the right choice for you.
• Take a look at their data security.
  Data security is essential, especially when dealing with legal documents. You need to ensure that the eDiscovery platform you're considering uses the best data security protocols available to protect against cybercriminals or viruses.
• Check their track record.
  An eDiscovery provider’s track record is a clear sign that tells you whether they are safe to hire or not. You should look not only at how many years they have been in business, but also at whether or not they have had any confidentiality breaches in the past. Breaches would be a serious red flag.

Why Choose Eide Bailly for your eDiscovery Firm

All our eDiscovery professionals are certified digital forensic examiners who are specifically trained to forensically preserve and document ESI. Our professionals maintain both electronic and physical chain of custody throughout all our projects.

We use state of the art technology and eDiscovery platforms, which allow you to review work in an intuitive way. Because our software is cloud-based, you can view it securely and have access to responsive support at any time. All of this is done using court-proven forensic methodologies to ensure you have the information you need and can use it.

We also understand that access to critical information doesn’t have to break the bank. Controlling the costs associated with eDiscovery matters to you and it matters to us. Our eDiscovery management technology solution is scalable to fit any size litigation. Your data is handled efficiently and cost-effectively with an investigative approach, so you can maximize its use.

eDiscovery companies focus on a best practice approach to preserving, investigating and providing what you and your client need the most: the electronically stored information (ESI) necessary for your legal case.

eDiscovery management companies provide services like:

Preservation of Electronically Stored Data
eDiscovery service providers often start the discovery process by saving and storing all data relevant to the litigation, such as emails and documents.

Maintaining Chain-of-Custody
Chain-of-custody refers to the trail of activities done on a piece of evidence. It’s crucial to maintain this integrity, as it’s a requirement for evidence to be submitted in court.

Remote Collections
eDiscovery firms will often facilitate the collection of evidence through online file transfers. This makes the discovery process much quicker.

Data Culling/Filtering
Data culling is a crucial step done by eDiscovery companies that cuts unnecessary information. It helps speed up the discovery process.

Privilege Filtering with a Privilege Log
Documents that are tagged as privileged will need to be maintained and appropriately restricted. Logs will also help track user activity to ensure transparency and accountability.

Processing
A vital function of eDiscovery companies is to process the data, making it more usable further down the discovery pipeline.

Load File Creation
Load files are support files that help organize separate pieces of data into useful chunks when a document is loaded.

Secure Hosted Review
This feature allows the review process to be done virtually in a secure environment.

File Conversion
Some files will need to be converted (for example, from an old to a new format) to make them more readable or accessible. This is an enormous time saver for a task that is crucial, but tedious.

Bates Numbering
Electronic discovery service providers make use of the Bates numbering scheme to tag documents for easy identification when needed.

Redacting
An eDiscovery service provider should facilitate redaction, or the removal of keywords from a document, before it’s sent to other key parties.

Archiving Data for Litigation
Archiving data effectively keeps critical litigation data safe and prevents it from being deleted.

Project Management
Managing the documents, information and key personnel in a complicated case requires project management features present in platforms made by most eDiscovery vendors.

Assisted Review by Attorneys
By combining the expertise of a legal team and the intelligent features of an eDiscovery company, large volumes of documents can be reviewed accurately in a short amount of time.