At LitSavant we specialise in providing independent practical consultancy services in the area of edisclosure and litigation support. Whether you are an in-house legal department, a law firm, service provider or a software supplier, we are able to assist you.
Our consultancy covers all aspects of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) from formulating document management strategies for blue chip companies to identifying presentation systems for deploying material at a hearing. We have advised on formulating defensible collection methodologies, identified effective culling strategies to reduce the volume of material to be reviewed and devised and implemented review strategies for cases ranging in size from a few thousand documents to several million. We have practical experience of operating document processing software and litigation support systems and understand their strengths and limitations.
Key to our practice is our ability to understand and explain technical terminology to lawyers and legal terminology to technologists. Bridging these communication gaps is vital to ensure that those involved in managing the document lifecycle are able to work effectively with their legal teams. We pride ourselves on being able to provide pragmatic solutions to these sorts of challenges whilst thinking outside the box.
Early Case Assessment: a widely abused term in which corporate data is sifted and categorised with a view to determining an organisation's exposure in the context of a dispute. The best ECA systems allow the sifting to take place within a corporation's own data store and can be used to drill down rapidly to identify the most pertinent evidentiary material and to facilitate decisions whether to litigate or settle.
It is unfortunate that this dispute about the extent of the key word search comes to Court after the Defendants acted unilaterally in choosing key words and conducting a search. In acting unilaterally, and in disregarding the clear advice in Part 31 Practice Direction, the Defendants have exposed themselves to the risk that the Court will conclude that their search was inadequate and that the Court should order the Defendants to carry out a further search.
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