Combating Big Data with a 'Facts First' Approach to e-Discovery

One of the most pressing challenges for legal teams is the ability to quickly identify relevant electronically stored information (ESI) when litigation or regulatory action arises. This challenge has been significantly exacerbated by the arrival of “Big Data,” which refers to data sets that are so large and complex that mining and obtaining useful intelligence about them is impossible using conventional analytical methods and tools. Concerned with maintaining defensibility, many organizations take a “preserve everything” approach, which results in data sets so large that it becomes extremely difficult to identify the most relevant ESI early enough to potentially change the direction of the matter. This problem cannot be overcome by hiring more people, installing more servers or hiring outside service providers. It must be addressed holistically and aggressively with a combination of human intelligence, legal process and advanced information retrieval technology. Taken together, this approach represents a “Facts First” intelligence-gathering methodology that allows legal teams to identify, analyze and defensibly reduce ESI volumes.