E-Discovery Processing

At Capital Legal Solutions we developed our own electronic discovery system to give us maximum control over the processing of electronically stored information. Since e-discovery is a moving target, we are constantly updating our system. Our clients swear by the results.

The fact that our technology is proprietary yields direct benefits to our clients, namely:

• Lower cost: since we do not pay “click” charges or license fees to external software companies, we do not have to pass those charges on to our customers.
• Enhanced responsiveness: when a CLS client is faced with a unique processing challenge, our engineering team addresses it immediately; our clients do not wait in a queue until some third party developer finds time to assist.
• Defensibility: we can document and justify every step of processing; at CLS there are no black boxes.

We developed our system to be reliable, robust, fast and flexible. Our system supports all basic e-discovery processing functions and offers dozens of enhancements that we feel a world-class service provider should provide. We have implemented these functions in a modular fashion so we can customize our workflow to match each project’s requirements. Key functions include:

• Metadata and Text Extraction
  We capture as much information as possible from the native files and store it in a database which is the foundation underpinning all downstream activities. We capture metadata whether it is stored by the native application or by the operating system. We work with the files in their native format; we do not convert them to an intermediate format before processing as some vendors do with Lotus Notes mail. We maintain relationships between items to ensure the integrity of attachment ranges and email threads, facilitating subsequent document review.
• Data Reduction (Culling)
  Minimizing the amount of processed data that goes to attorney review is crucial to controlling costs since review is the single most expensive component of the e-discovery process. To accomplish this, CLS applies the most effective data reduction techniques: filtering of system files and folders, date filtering, file type filtering, deduplication, and searching.
• Deliverables and Productions
  Besides hosting data in our proprietary eZReview® platform, we routinely deliver data in a variety of formats including native, TIFF, PDF and others. We provide load files for popular litigation support platforms such as Concordance, Summation, iCONECT, Documatrix, Ringtail and Introspect.

The best method for handling exceptions – i.e. files that cannot be processed – may vary depending on the project. We confer with the client to determine what fits the needs of the project at hand, and of course, we provide detailed exception reports.

Auditing is built into our processes so we have reports to document what takes place at every step. These reports are the starting point for our quality control. We augment them with extensive inspections of the output by engineers trained to detect anomalies and take corrective action.