Share It
Blame it on COVID. When the pandemic hit, GCs and legal teams were forced to pivot – almost without warning – to a hybrid of office-based and remote working practices. With the broader acceptance of flexible working practices and greater adoption of digital collaboration tools, at least 25% of legal professionals are expected to continue working outside the office even as we swing back to a more normal way of life.
Meanwhile, ESI collection during eDiscovery involves more data types and data volumes than ever before. Due to the circumstances brought on by the pandemic, virtually every industry has seen accelerated demand for cloud-based collaboration platforms across multiple devices. Dropbox, Slack, Google Drive, Outlook, OneDrive, and Gmail are now accepted tools for organizations of all kinds and sizes. The ever-more-complex regulatory compliance environment is also driving significant increases in data volumes.
So, what does this mean for today’s legal professionals? Capable eDiscovery technology and analytics are going to be a long-term, strategic advantage for processing data and meeting deadlines. Designing strong, workable processes and workflows, along with appropriate technologies, are necessary to effectively collect ESI and process these new data types in the cloud without requiring extensive IT help. At the same time, legal teams must avoid incurring unnecessary costs or delays during inquiries, investigations, or litigation.
Maneuvering and Collecting Through the Cloud: Secure, Direct, Defensible
Because collection involves direct interaction with data, most people think of it as principally an IT activity. However, an effective ESI data collection strategy demands the active involvement of legal professionals as well.
The ability to import data directly and securely from the most widely used data collaboration sources created tremendous efficiency for legal teams. Direct collection increases accuracy and automatically records chain of custody information to ensure a defensible process. Casepoint responded to this demand from the marketplace by integrating new robust collection capabilities into a single platform and offering multiple avenues to collect directly from cloud application sources. Also, when we collect, we collect straight into our workspaces. While other providers offer a separate workspace for processing and another for collection, Casepoint uniquely allows all of this to happen within the same workspace – there is no need to transfer data back and forth. The integration of these functions within a single matter-specific workspace ensures the collection process moves seamlessly and efficiently.
With evidence being automatically collected directly from the source and accessed via the Casepoint eDiscovery application, legal teams are no longer dependent on IT teams or their eDiscovery providers to manually help with all collection requests. Collected data is integrated directly, eliminating the need for users to log in and out of other applications or manually transfer duplicate files. Moreover, the collection module is available both within the Datasets menu in Casepoint eDiscovery or in the Casepoint legal hold module, which can automatically log and inventory all the collected data and generate chain-of-custody reports on the collection at the level of individual items.
Intelligent Processing Saves Critical Time and Alleviates Costly Claw-back
Each year, organizations end up wasting millions of dollars troubleshooting problems associated with the processing of data because the processing engine they use is not capable of identifying potential issues proactively. To avoid this scenario, users need to look for platforms that tackle these challenges head-on. While there are only a few product offerings available in the market, the advantages are many!
One way to address this challenge is to look for a processing engine that leverages advanced analytics, powered by built-in artificial intelligence tools, to deliver smart and dynamic processing. At Casepoint, we perform a few extra steps to identify partially searchable PDFs and to enable the OCRing of these PDFs automatically – an extremely helpful capability that makes all texts searchable. There is no need to customize. We also look for unstable container files; we inventory upfront and look for errors on the back end. From there, we notify the appropriate parties or custodians and alert them to any discrepancies.
Innovative capabilities such as these – which are provided in Casepoint Intelligent Processing – enable users to produce the highest quality data at blazingly fast speeds, save critical time, and alleviate the costly challenges of reproductions and claw-back. An intelligent wizard detects errors or other issues and presents them to users, enabling them to make better, more informed decisions.
A Single, Holistic Platform to Innovate and Scale
Tracking the movement of data from the point of identification through collection and processing can be challenging. Some end-to-end eDiscovery platforms are actually a mishmash of products from multiple acquired technology companies, without true integration. Data must be moved from one module to the other, which increases the difficulty of accurately documenting chain of custody.
On the backend, moving files to and from multiple data lakes can create difficulties in successfully transferring files over. This is a time-consuming process that also puts precision and data integrity in jeopardy. With Casepoint, when you perform collections through legal hold, you will be asked to designate which workspace you’d like this data to be sent or assigned to. There is no central repository, and so all that collected data will be contained within that specific workspace. Also, because of this integrated process, there are no file conversion errors as you move from one data type to another. Having this functionality, which enables the seamless movement from process to process while continuously maintaining data integrity, is vital for collecting both securely and as efficiently.
The Casepoint Connection
Today’s GCs and legal teams must deliver very high-quality work in an increasingly tough environment. The Casepoint Legal Discovery Platform’s robust preservation, collection, and processing capabilities within one cloud-based platform allow legal teams to dramatically streamline their chain of custody for defensible investigations and litigation. Casepoint’s clients also significantly reduce the risk and costs for collection and processing for legal organizations and their clients. Casepoint’s solution is designed to address current and future challenges in a unified, comprehensive, and intelligent platform.
Hear customer success stories detailing how law firms, corporations, and government agencies experienced significant reduction of risk and costs for their organization and their clients.
