Leveraging UnitedLex and Questio for a Challenging e-Discovery Case

Sheppard Mullin is a full service Global 100 firm with 640 attorneys in 15 offices located in the United States, Europe and Asia. Since 1927, companies have turned to Sheppard Mullin to handle corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions. In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100.

Supporting the electronic discovery needs of our clients and our attorneys is Sheppard Mullin's in-house team of 36 attorneys and litigation support personnel who have deep expertise in e-discovery. We provide guidance to attorneys across all offices and practice areas. From a variety of locations, the team collaborates on all facets of the e-discovery process, from custodial interviews, document collection and review to managing outsourcing and other vendor relationships. The only exception is processing, for which we currently use outside parties in order to mitigate risk.

e-Discovery Challenges

It's no secret that both the time and money spent on e-discovery is skyrocketing. Fifteen years ago, discovery almost exclusively involved the collection and review of paper documents and was, in comparison to today's costs, relatively cheap. Today, the amount of data that the world generates is estimated to be doubling each year, and with that comes increasing opportunities for human error or technical glitches that could have a dramatic impact on case outcomes. The amount of data has also dramatically increased the costs associated with litigation.

The Story

Sheppard Mullin has worked with UnitedLex on a number of matters in the past, with services including collection, processing, hosting and document review. We appreciate the fact that UnitedLex can support the full spectrum of e-discovery ' from data collection to processing to review and production ' combining sophisticated technologies, proven best practices and methodologies, and knowledgeable personnel with solid domain expertise.

In one such matter, UnitedLex handled the document review and we experienced an extraordinarily high and sustained rate of 120 documents reviewed per hour ' about twice what we would normally expect. Together with the advance work that Sheppard Mullin did, our training of UnitedLex's document review team, and UnitedLex's technology and skilled personnel, we were able to eliminate close to 95% of the irrelevant documents before the review process began.

Six months later, Sheppard Mullin was retained by a large manufacturer for a major litigation and the schedule provided an extremely short deadline to complete discovery. Faced with tight deadlines, we turned to UnitedLex based on its performance with the previous matter.

Based on the number of custodians, UnitedLex estimated approximately 200 GB of data would be collected from the client. But after conducting custodian interviews, identifying all the potential sources of relevant data, and collecting that data, we actually ended up collecting more than 1 TB of data ' five times the original estimate. Based on prior cases with a similar amount of data, we knew that it would take weeks to be in a position to promote the potentially relevant documents for review. Realizing that traditional methods of data elimination, de-duping and de-NISTing would have taken too long and severely impacted our ability to conduct a thorough document review, we gave UnitedLex the green light to implement Questio ' its new technology-driven managed service ' to help accelerate the e-discovery process and substantially lower costs.

Questio combines sophisticated technologies with highly trained legal personnel to minimize the amount of non-responsive data collected in the pre-processing phase of e-discovery. Unlike traditional linear review, technology-assisted review or predictive coding ' all of which require promoting the entire data set for review, and therefore would have taken much longer to process ' Questio's approach eliminates non-responsive data in the much earlier ingestion stage, thus minimizing otherwise hefty storage, processing and document review costs.

UnitedLex's Questio experts worked closely with me and the attorneys on the matter as well as our client and its IT staff to compile the appropriate custodians, data and file types, and other search criteria needed to identify the most relevant information for processing and review. From there, Questio created a forensic image of our client's entire data network and began systematically eliminating non-responsive data and files and extracting the relevant ones.

Simultaneously, Questio created an interactive graphical visualization of the client's custodial relationships, mapping out all e-mail conversations and searching for any possible missing information or other data anomalies that could possibly lead to litigation about the process instead of the merits. Clicking on any one of the links between custodians enabled our attorneys to read specific e-mails or view shared files, and thus get a better understanding of the nature of the custodial relationships in order to better prepare our legal strategies.

The Outcomes

It took our legal team and UnitedLex's Questio experts a day to collect more than 1 TB of data. Within a few hours, Questio filtered out 400 GB of unnecessary data from the original 1 TB. In less than two days, we were ready to start document review. After ingestion, Questio's filters and multi-shore delivery team further reduced the amount of data to be promoted for review down to 81 GB ' an approximate 95% overall data size reduction.

In terms of document reduction, Questio helped us defensibly eliminate more than one million of the more than three million documents we initially collected. After further filtering, only 278,000 documents were promoted for review ' resulting in an approximate 92% reduction.

In the end, fewer than 62,000 documents totaling 18 GB were produced. Thanks to UnitedLex and Questio, we were able to deliver the required documents within the two-week window.

UnitedLex estimates that Questio helped us eliminate 70% more documents from the review process than we would have if we had used a different data elimination approach. This reduction alone helped us lower our processing costs by 60% and our document review costs by 92%. As a result, 83% fewer document reviewers were needed to complete the task, which took about a week. Given the short time frame from collection to production, had we used a different data elimination process, we would not have been able to review and produce the documents. Further, we would have spent substantially more money on processing, hosting, and document review.

By UnitedLex's estimate, the reduced processing and review costs, combined with the cost savings of not having to promote and store more than 1 TB of data, saved a total of $2.2 million for the client. While the amount of actual data collected ' before involving Questio ' was five times greater than our initial estimate, thanks to Questio the actual e-discovery cost for the client turned out to be only one and-a-half times the initial estimate. Had we not used Questio, the added costs would have been prohibitive and we most likely would have been unable to produce the documents on time.

Conclusion

My personal opinion is that there is no single “right way” to approach e-discovery. The practices and processes that are used must be defensible and the output must comply with the applicable rules, law, and any agreements between the parties. However, eliminating data in the preproduction phase is an effective way of lowering overall e-discovery costs. When faced with a quickly expanding list of custodians, overwhelming amounts of data, and/or time and cost constraints, Questio delivers exceptional value and produces dramatic time and cost savings.

Mark E. McGrath is a partner in the Business Trial Practice Group and the Intellectual Property Practice Group of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. He is also a member of the firm's Electronic Discovery Group, where he counsels and supports the firm's attorneys across all practice areas on e-discovery matters. The views or opinion expressed herein are those of Mr. McGrath and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views or opinions of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.

Sheppard Mullin is a full service Global 100 firm with 640 attorneys in 15 offices located in the United States, Europe and Asia. Since 1927, companies have turned to Sheppard Mullin to handle corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions. In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100.

Supporting the electronic discovery needs of our clients and our attorneys is Sheppard Mullin's in-house team of 36 attorneys and litigation support personnel who have deep expertise in e-discovery. We provide guidance to attorneys across all offices and practice areas. From a variety of locations, the team collaborates on all facets of the e-discovery process, from custodial interviews, document collection and review to managing outsourcing and other vendor relationships. The only exception is processing, for which we currently use outside parties in order to mitigate risk.

e-Discovery Challenges

It's no secret that both the time and money spent on e-discovery is skyrocketing. Fifteen years ago, discovery almost exclusively involved the collection and review of paper documents and was, in comparison to today's costs, relatively cheap. Today, the amount of data that the world generates is estimated to be doubling each year, and with that comes increasing opportunities for human error or technical glitches that could have a dramatic impact on case outcomes. The amount of data has also dramatically increased the costs associated with litigation.

The Story

Sheppard Mullin has worked with UnitedLex on a number of matters in the past, with services including collection, processing, hosting and document review. We appreciate the fact that UnitedLex can support the full spectrum of e-discovery ' from data collection to processing to review and production ' combining sophisticated technologies, proven best practices and methodologies, and knowledgeable personnel with solid domain expertise.

In one such matter, UnitedLex handled the document review and we experienced an extraordinarily high and sustained rate of 120 documents reviewed per hour ' about twice what we would normally expect. Together with the advance work that Sheppard Mullin did, our training of UnitedLex's document review team, and UnitedLex's technology and skilled personnel, we were able to eliminate close to 95% of the irrelevant documents before the review process began.

Six months later, Sheppard Mullin was retained by a large manufacturer for a major litigation and the schedule provided an extremely short deadline to complete discovery. Faced with tight deadlines, we turned to UnitedLex based on its performance with the previous matter.

Based on the number of custodians, UnitedLex estimated approximately 200 GB of data would be collected from the client. But after conducting custodian interviews, identifying all the potential sources of relevant data, and collecting that data, we actually ended up collecting more than 1 TB of data ' five times the original estimate. Based on prior cases with a similar amount of data, we knew that it would take weeks to be in a position to promote the potentially relevant documents for review. Realizing that traditional methods of data elimination, de-duping and de-NISTing would have taken too long and severely impacted our ability to conduct a thorough document review, we gave UnitedLex the green light to implement Questio ' its new technology-driven managed service ' to help accelerate the e-discovery process and substantially lower costs.

Questio combines sophisticated technologies with highly trained legal personnel to minimize the amount of non-responsive data collected in the pre-processing phase of e-discovery. Unlike traditional linear review, technology-assisted review or predictive coding ' all of which require promoting the entire data set for review, and therefore would have taken much longer to process ' Questio's approach eliminates non-responsive data in the much earlier ingestion stage, thus minimizing otherwise hefty storage, processing and document review costs.

UnitedLex's Questio experts worked closely with me and the attorneys on the matter as well as our client and its IT staff to compile the appropriate custodians, data and file types, and other search criteria needed to identify the most relevant information for processing and review. From there, Questio created a forensic image of our client's entire data network and began systematically eliminating non-responsive data and files and extracting the relevant ones.

Simultaneously, Questio created an interactive graphical visualization of the client's custodial relationships, mapping out all e-mail conversations and searching for any possible missing information or other data anomalies that could possibly lead to litigation about the process instead of the merits. Clicking on any one of the links between custodians enabled our attorneys to read specific e-mails or view shared files, and thus get a better understanding of the nature of the custodial relationships in order to better prepare our legal strategies.

The Outcomes

It took our legal team and UnitedLex's Questio experts a day to collect more than 1 TB of data. Within a few hours, Questio filtered out 400 GB of unnecessary data from the original 1 TB. In less than two days, we were ready to start document review. After ingestion, Questio's filters and multi-shore delivery team further reduced the amount of data to be promoted for review down to 81 GB ' an approximate 95% overall data size reduction.

In terms of document reduction, Questio helped us defensibly eliminate more than one million of the more than three million documents we initially collected. After further filtering, only 278,000 documents were promoted for review ' resulting in an approximate 92% reduction.

In the end, fewer than 62,000 documents totaling 18 GB were produced. Thanks to UnitedLex and Questio, we were able to deliver the required documents within the two-week window.

UnitedLex estimates that Questio helped us eliminate 70% more documents from the review process than we would have if we had used a different data elimination approach. This reduction alone helped us lower our processing costs by 60% and our document review costs by 92%. As a result, 83% fewer document reviewers were needed to complete the task, which took about a week. Given the short time frame from collection to production, had we used a different data elimination process, we would not have been able to review and produce the documents. Further, we would have spent substantially more money on processing, hosting, and document review.

By UnitedLex's estimate, the reduced processing and review costs, combined with the cost savings of not having to promote and store more than 1 TB of data, saved a total of $2.2 million for the client. While the amount of actual data collected ' before involving Questio ' was five times greater than our initial estimate, thanks to Questio the actual e-discovery cost for the client turned out to be only one and-a-half times the initial estimate. Had we not used Questio, the added costs would have been prohibitive and we most likely would have been unable to produce the documents on time.

Conclusion

My personal opinion is that there is no single “right way” to approach e-discovery. The practices and processes that are used must be defensible and the output must comply with the applicable rules, law, and any agreements between the parties. However, eliminating data in the preproduction phase is an effective way of lowering overall e-discovery costs. When faced with a quickly expanding list of custodians, overwhelming amounts of data, and/or time and cost constraints, Questio delivers exceptional value and produces dramatic time and cost savings.

Mark E. McGrath is a partner in the Business Trial Practice Group and the Intellectual Property Practice Group of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. He is also a member of the firm's Electronic Discovery Group, where he counsels and supports the firm's attorneys across all practice areas on e-discovery matters. The views or opinion expressed herein are those of Mr. McGrath and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views or opinions of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.