Daegis Advocates Expert Driven Search Process With eDiscovery Analytics Consultancy (eDAC)

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Imagine, if you can, saving and storing every piece of snail mail that has ever been sent to you. Every credit card bill, bank statement, birthday card, and every package of coupons are haphazardly tossed into file folders, boxes or that ubiquitous junk drawer and forgotten.

Now imagine that at some point you’re called upon to quickly find all the information you have relating to a specific topic.

Where would you begin looking? Would you look through file folders or boxes and hope for the best? Or would you draw up a list of the types of documents that would mostly likely contain the information you’re looking for and hire someone to help you sift through the mounds of data more quickly?

The attorneys at Barnes & Thornburg, an Indianapolis-based law firm, recently faced a similar challenge when tasked with identifying every email, text message, document, attachment, calendar event, and image related to a case. Every server, computer, backup media, flash drive, and CD that contained relevant information had to be identified, located and examined. The resulting volume of data then needed to be pared down to only the information that was relevant to the case in a fast, cost effective and legally defensible way.

The eDiscovery Analytics Consultants (eDAC) at Daegis (NASDAQ:UNFY) helped Barnes & Thornburg quickly implement a process that enabled the firm to reduce the number of documents needed for review in a particular matter. Initially, more than 500,000 documents were collected with 235,000 identified for review. But after implementing Daegis’ search analytics methodology, the number of documents identified for review was reduced to 18,000.

For Barnes & Thornburg, using Daegis’ DocHunter eDiscovery platform along with the experience of Daegis’ eDACs reduced the total document review cost to $36,000 from an estimated $486,000 and increased responsive rates from .05 to 53 percent. Barnes & Thornburg estimated that document review costs would have approached $150 per hour with each attorney reviewing approximately 600 documents per day.

Traditional search methods use an agreed upon set of search terms are no longer deemed satisfactory, and are receiving increasing scrutiny from courts and opposing counsel. Too often, these terms lack everyday colloquialisms, industry jargon, trade names and other elements of language that can be critical components of a defensible search strategy. Best practices dictate that conducting several iterations of refined searches that incorporate feedback and modified selection criteria significantly improves the accuracy and relevancy of the data to be reviewed by limiting the amount of documents inadvertently returned by overly broad searches.

The Daegis eDAC process couples highly skilled human judgment with iterative search methodologies, statistical analysis and advanced technology to provide precise results for clients that are both targeted and defensible. Under a very tight time constraint, Barnes & Thornburg faced a one-day burdensome deadline for review due to a set of queries that would have resulted in approximately 30,000 documents. The Daegis eDACs prepared a report testing the impact of those searches and quickly found that certain queries were returning unintended results. In less than a half hour, the eDACs worked with Barnes & Thornburg to make changes to the search criteria based on an analysis of the queries. After sampling and testing the queries, modifications were made and the new search criteria resulted in 4,000 documents designated for review.

"I have worked with the eDAC team several times now, and the ability to understand the impact each specific search term has on my dataset is invaluable," said James Norman, technology services manager, Barnes & Thornburg LLP. "I love asking other vendors or attorneys this question, 'On the last project you worked on, what percentage of what the attorneys reviewed was responsive? How much money did your client spend reviewing non-responsive documents?' Inevitably the answers are unknown. We've found that by reviewing the eDAC report with the attorneys, we can reduce the review set by 10 to 60 percent and save thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for our clients."

"Daegis’ eDiscovery solutions and methodology enables legal teams to apply search in a practical and efficient way, ensuring the right searches are performed, the right analytics are applied and the results are measured, in order to ultimately lead to increased responsive rates and decreased document review costs,” said Kurt Jensen, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Daegis.

"At the beginning of eDiscovery projects, people often make incorrect assumptions and then are disappointed by the results. They have no idea how much they are spending or saving nor do they have a grasp on how good the results are. The Daegis eDAC process ensures that every client will see an improvement in both search quality and cost management.”

According to the Sedona Conference Best Practices Commentary on the Use of Search and Information Retrieval Methods in E-Discovery, issued in August 2007, "Lawyers must recognize that, just as important as utilizing the automated tools, is tuning the process in and by which a legal team uses such tools, including a close involvement of lead counsel. This may require an iterative process which importantly utilizes feedback and learning as tools, and allows for measurement of results.”

Additional resources (print):

• Once is Not Enough: The Case for Using an Iterative Approach to Choosing and Applying Selection Criteria in Discovery, EDRM, July 2010
• Right Size Your Review Leveraging Data Analytics, EDRM, September 2009

Additional resources (multimedia):

• Recall and Precision in Legal Search, LegalTalkNetwork, May 2010
• Litigation Support Run on Search Podcast: Episode 1 – Targeted Results, ILTA.com, October 2009

About Daegis

Daegis provides technology and services that span the EDRM, from information management through production, to deliver a complete eDiscovery solution for corporations and law firms. Daegis’ technology enables clients to identify, collect and preserve ESI as a foundation for analysis, processing, hosted review and production. In addition, Daegis offers a range of professional services such as litigation consulting, eDiscovery Analytics, data collection, project management and managed document review. Clients count on Daegis to reduce litigation and information management costs, increase defensibility, and furnish a blueprint for repeatable success across the litigation lifecycle.

For more information, visit www.daegis.com, follow us on Twitter at @daegis or LinkedIn.

Daegis and Unify Corp. (NASDAQ:UNFY) recently merged. Together, the companies will deliver industry-first solutions that integrate information archiving with electronic discovery management to bring organizations flexibility, scalability and predictability across the entire litigation lifecycle.