Legal Tech: Crisis Control: Best Practices for Emergency E-Discovery and Incident Response

Under the intense emotion and stress inherent in crisis circumstances, legal teams orchestrate short term e-discovery to uncover who knew/knows what relating to the crisis and events leading up to and immediately following it. They assess the breadth of damage and injury in the moment as the crisis unfolds, alongside launching longer-term investigations into what caused the accident and any potential negligence or wrongdoing that occurred. Getting to the facts quickly is critical to prepare for litigation, government investigations and potential criminal charges, and to expedite restitution for victims.

Our teams have worked on a number of crisis e-discovery matters around the world, supporting clients through the lifecycle of complex investigations and litigation that result from these disastrous and often tragic events. In most cases, crisis e-discovery projects are highly likely to involve large data volumes (often double digit terabytes) and span many involved parties (e.g., a committee of plaintiffs of affected parties, governmental agencies, foreign governments, states' attorneys general, etc.). They require tremendous manpower and broad expertise in all practice areas, including data collection, processing, project management, advanced analytics, case management, foreign language review and production. Timelines are often extraordinarily tight, especially in government investigations in which counsel is preparing for congressional testimony and other regulator requests for data.