Small Company, Big E-Discovery Problems
A small company was sued for breach of contract with RICO allegations. While the company was not large, their records retention practices compiled a volume of potentially relevant documents that would rival much larger company’s. The estimated discovery costs associated with this case were roughly equal to one year’s revenues, but the case was strategic and early settlement was not a good option. The general counsel made it clear to outside counsel and ACT: find another way!
ACT, working closely with outside counsel, speculated that the pack-rat tendencies of the employees might lend itself to ACT’s Tier 1 review process. Tier 1 provides counsel with an early and inexpensive look at the document collections. Provided with this access, outside counsel was easily able to distinguish between those documents and folders that were obviously non-relevant and those that might be relevant. Spending an average of just 30 minutes per custodian, outside counsel was able to defensibly eliminate more than 90% of the documents from further processing and review. Tier 1’s built-in audit trail also allowed counsel to go back later and supplement the review with documents that had been previously withheld.
As a secondary step, ACT, again working with outside counsel, speculated that since the collections were from a small number of custodians (fewer than 30), there might be high rates of duplication. ACT proposed performing an aggressive de-duplication process to see if substantial reductions could be achieved. ACT informed counsel that if the results proved undesirable, ACT could “roll back” the de-duplication process and re-perform it with a different specification. Using the aggressive de-duplication specification, ACT was able to reduce the discovery population by additional 80%.
By using inexpensive reduction and review processes, ACT and outside counsel were able save our mutual client an estimated $10 million in e-discovery costs, affording the client the opportunity to litigate the case.