Using Relativity As an Information Governance Application

Information Governance Basics

According to the Gartner Glossary, information governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles and policies, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.

Because of the proliferation of data and the inherent risks and costs associated with preserving all of this data, information governance is an extremely popular topic at companies across the globe. Legal departments, Information Technology departments and C-Level executives all have a vested interested in developing policies and leveraging technology to effectively and efficiently govern an organization's information.

Technology can be designed, implemented and administered to support an organization's IG framework. The technology deployed by an organization will reflect and reinforce IG processes, roles and policies and standards. This technology will also enable the specification of decision rights while facilitating the appropriate behavior with respect to the creation, storage, use and archiving and deletion of information. Lastly, technology can be used to audit and report on important IG metrics. Organizations can leverage existing technology to develop and support their IG frameworks. Relativity's functionality offers many opportunities to manage information.

Real World Example

“Entity A” was preparing to bring a lawsuit against a number of parties in a construction defect case. As part of its preparation for this litigation, Entity A evaluated its litigation readiness by assessing the relevant data it had in its possession, custody or control. While completing this exercise, Entity A realized that it did not have data organized in a meaningful manner. This was an issue because it limited the ability of its counsel and forensic experts to perform a targeted collection of its data, resulting in an over-collection of its network shares. Making matters worse, data was not identified by custodian, so potentially all of the group network shares could potentially contain relevant data.

Upon realizing that its data was poorly organized, Entity A sought advice from counsel. After assessing and evaluating the situation, Entity A's counsel proposed a collection plan that would not only allow Entity A to fully meet its preservation obligations, but that would also allow it to systematically organize its data in a meaningful manner while eliminating redundant or irrelevant data that was not required to be preserved for litigation or any other regulatory purpose. The workflow that was developed allowed for a manner in which these documents could simultaneously be reviewed for responsiveness, confidentiality, privilege, etc., with respect to the litigation while also allowing the documents to be organized in a meaningful way for Entity A to blowback to its group network shares at the end of the review.

The first step in the process was to use Guidance Software's EnCase Enterprise tool to take logical images of all relevant shared network locations. Logical images of the relevant server locations were captured, verified, recorded, de-duplicated, culled and processed into Relativity. Over 200 gigabytes (GB) of data was ultimately loaded. Entity A complied with its legal obligations and completed the review and production of data without issue.

Once the data was produced in the “traditional” litigation context, Entity A got to work on leveraging the platform even further. Working under the guidance of its counsel and in collaboration with its e-discovery vendor, Entity A hired and trained a number of non-attorneys to begin the process of classifying the network documents that were loaded into Relativity. Entity A's counsel leveraged Relativity's functionality to create customized coding layouts that allowed the review team to enter in specific organizational information about electronic and hard copy documents alike. A list of possible custodians was identified for each document and sender, and recipient information was entered for all printed e-mails for which there was no electronic copy. Additionally, each document was given a date and a brief description was written about each document for indexing purposes.

For purposes of security, specific documents were tied to certain user groups using Relativity's security permissions and Relativity views were created to group like documents together in a list that could easily be exported to Excel. This was all done at almost no cost to the client because it would need to process, review and produce the documents for litigation whether or not they were organized.

While the litigation in our example has been ongoing for almost three years with at least another two years remaining, the work that was done utilizing Relativity has already provided a cost-effective method of information governance and organization for the client. De-duplication of the data resulted in the elimination of redundant information, while the eyes-on review allowed for the categorizing and organizing of documents that were previously not organized in a meaningful way. Further, to help streamline the review of documents and reduce the cost of review, Relativity's near duplicate analytics technology was used to group similar documents together. This resulted in a further reduction of the document review population by more than 50%.

Entity A now uses Relativity to search its shared locations for specific documents or types of documents, all while ensuring that documents are preserved for litigation and seen only by those individuals who need to see them. Documents can easily be retrieved using Relativity's search functions and customized views of specific types of documents can be created for ad hoc business or litigation-related tasks. While being used as a method of document organization, it is also being used by Entity A's outside counsel team to prepare for depositions and trial. Once this litigation is over, the method of file organization will be replicated in Entity A's “everyday” environment using native file extractions out of Relativity.

Conclusion

This case provides just one real world example of how Relativity can be used for IG purposes. Entity A's upcoming litigation provided it with an opportunity to effectively and efficiently develop its IG framework. Relativity's functionality, including analytics, security, views and layouts, allowed for the development of the organized storage of client documents while also doubling as a document review database as Entity A and its attorneys prepared for depositions and trial.

Richard Lutkus is a partner in the San Francisco office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. His practice is dedicated to complex information governance issues. Lutkus is the only attorney in the world that holds deeply technical certifications in digital forensics (EnCE), e-discovery (EnCEP), and information security (CEH). Tushar Vaidya is a staff attorney in Seyfarth Shaw's Chicago office. He is a member of the Litigation Department and e-discovery practice group. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.

By now, most litigation attorneys and litigation support personnel know that kCura's Relativity is the most prevalent database used for the review and production of Electronically Stored Information (ESI). Relativity is used by many of the AMLAW 100 law firms, Fortune 500 corporations, and over a hundred third-party e-discovery vendors. Attorneys, support staff, companies and vendors use Relativity to support document review on a broad scope. Cases can be anywhere from a few hundred to tens of millions of documents. In fact, it is not uncommon for document review vendors to have hundreds of contract attorneys working across the globe reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents per day from the same database in advance of making a large document production in response to a subpoena, discovery request, or a Department of Justice Second Request.

The process is extremely familiar. A company is sued or is the subject of a government investigation. As part of this action, the party bringing suit or the government makes demands for electronic information from the defendant. The defendant engages an e-discovery vendor to identify, preserve, collect, process, review and produce all non-privileged and relevant documents. The e-discovery vendor utilizes Relativity to complete this step-by-step process that mirrors the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).

Using Relativity to gather, review and produce documents in response to discovery requests has historically been its core use. However, there are a number of other ways in which Relativity can, and has, been leveraged to help companies and law firms achieve goals that do not have anything to do with litigation at all. At its core, Relativity is a well-organized and customizable relational database based on Microsoft SQL. Its functionality can be leveraged to complete almost any task that any other relational database could. Some examples of non-traditional ways in which Relativity has been used include: using it as a data entry tool for corporate or other important documents; as an evidence tracking repository; to abstract contracts; and to manage litigation holds. However, one of the most effective ways in which Relativity can be creatively used by competent operators is as an Information Governance (IG) application. This sounds out of place at first, but is entirely possible and achievable with creative thinking, sound organization, thoughtful processes, and skilled Relativity administrators.

Information Governance Basics

According to the Gartner Glossary, information governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles and policies, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.

Because of the proliferation of data and the inherent risks and costs associated with preserving all of this data, information governance is an extremely popular topic at companies across the globe. Legal departments, Information Technology departments and C-Level executives all have a vested interested in developing policies and leveraging technology to effectively and efficiently govern an organization's information.

Technology can be designed, implemented and administered to support an organization's IG framework. The technology deployed by an organization will reflect and reinforce IG processes, roles and policies and standards. This technology will also enable the specification of decision rights while facilitating the appropriate behavior with respect to the creation, storage, use and archiving and deletion of information. Lastly, technology can be used to audit and report on important IG metrics. Organizations can leverage existing technology to develop and support their IG frameworks. Relativity's functionality offers many opportunities to manage information.

Real World Example

“Entity A” was preparing to bring a lawsuit against a number of parties in a construction defect case. As part of its preparation for this litigation, Entity A evaluated its litigation readiness by assessing the relevant data it had in its possession, custody or control. While completing this exercise, Entity A realized that it did not have data organized in a meaningful manner. This was an issue because it limited the ability of its counsel and forensic experts to perform a targeted collection of its data, resulting in an over-collection of its network shares. Making matters worse, data was not identified by custodian, so potentially all of the group network shares could potentially contain relevant data.

Upon realizing that its data was poorly organized, Entity A sought advice from counsel. After assessing and evaluating the situation, Entity A's counsel proposed a collection plan that would not only allow Entity A to fully meet its preservation obligations, but that would also allow it to systematically organize its data in a meaningful manner while eliminating redundant or irrelevant data that was not required to be preserved for litigation or any other regulatory purpose. The workflow that was developed allowed for a manner in which these documents could simultaneously be reviewed for responsiveness, confidentiality, privilege, etc., with respect to the litigation while also allowing the documents to be organized in a meaningful way for Entity A to blowback to its group network shares at the end of the review.

The first step in the process was to use Guidance Software's EnCase Enterprise tool to take logical images of all relevant shared network locations. Logical images of the relevant server locations were captured, verified, recorded, de-duplicated, culled and processed into Relativity. Over 200 gigabytes (GB) of data was ultimately loaded. Entity A complied with its legal obligations and completed the review and production of data without issue.

Once the data was produced in the “traditional” litigation context, Entity A got to work on leveraging the platform even further. Working under the guidance of its counsel and in collaboration with its e-discovery vendor, Entity A hired and trained a number of non-attorneys to begin the process of classifying the network documents that were loaded into Relativity. Entity A's counsel leveraged Relativity's functionality to create customized coding layouts that allowed the review team to enter in specific organizational information about electronic and hard copy documents alike. A list of possible custodians was identified for each document and sender, and recipient information was entered for all printed e-mails for which there was no electronic copy. Additionally, each document was given a date and a brief description was written about each document for indexing purposes.

For purposes of security, specific documents were tied to certain user groups using Relativity's security permissions and Relativity views were created to group like documents together in a list that could easily be exported to Excel. This was all done at almost no cost to the client because it would need to process, review and produce the documents for litigation whether or not they were organized.

While the litigation in our example has been ongoing for almost three years with at least another two years remaining, the work that was done utilizing Relativity has already provided a cost-effective method of information governance and organization for the client. De-duplication of the data resulted in the elimination of redundant information, while the eyes-on review allowed for the categorizing and organizing of documents that were previously not organized in a meaningful way. Further, to help streamline the review of documents and reduce the cost of review, Relativity's near duplicate analytics technology was used to group similar documents together. This resulted in a further reduction of the document review population by more than 50%.

Entity A now uses Relativity to search its shared locations for specific documents or types of documents, all while ensuring that documents are preserved for litigation and seen only by those individuals who need to see them. Documents can easily be retrieved using Relativity's search functions and customized views of specific types of documents can be created for ad hoc business or litigation-related tasks. While being used as a method of document organization, it is also being used by Entity A's outside counsel team to prepare for depositions and trial. Once this litigation is over, the method of file organization will be replicated in Entity A's “everyday” environment using native file extractions out of Relativity.

Conclusion

This case provides just one real world example of how Relativity can be used for IG purposes. Entity A's upcoming litigation provided it with an opportunity to effectively and efficiently develop its IG framework. Relativity's functionality, including analytics, security, views and layouts, allowed for the development of the organized storage of client documents while also doubling as a document review database as Entity A and its attorneys prepared for depositions and trial.

Richard Lutkus is a partner in the San Francisco office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. His practice is dedicated to complex information governance issues. Lutkus is the only attorney in the world that holds deeply technical certifications in digital forensics (EnCE), e-discovery (EnCEP), and information security (CEH). Tushar Vaidya is a staff attorney in Seyfarth Shaw's Chicago office. He is a member of the Litigation Department and e-discovery practice group. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.