Representative Experience

eMerge provided centralized, end-to-end eDiscovery management for a German corporation with global operations involved in multiple federal and state litigations and domestic arbitrations.  The client’s data, which contained PII as well as highly proprietary information, had to be collected, processed, reviewed, and produced in a manner that complied with both US discovery obligations and EU/German data privacy requirements.

The Challenges

• Comply with US discovery obligations
• Discover documents and information needed to develop facts and achieve optimal case outcomes
• Comply with EU and German data privacy laws
• Protect client’s intellectual property
• Meet deadlines and production requirements of multiple parallel litigation matters while ensuring consistency in work product
• Coordinate with five law firms serving as outside merits counsel

eMerge Solutions

eDiscovery Advocacy & Strategy

• Negotiated protocols across multiple matters with different sets of outside lawyers to ensure adequate and consistent protection of client data
• Worked with client legal, IT, and outside privacy and merits counsel to develop defensible, jurisdictionally compliant process for identifying, preserving, collecting, analyzing, transferring, and producing ESI in multiple matters
• Assisted merits counsel with discovery motions, depositions, and briefing
• Provided legal advocacy on eDiscovery issues by leading meet and confer discussions with opposing counsel, providing declarations and legal research, and arguing before an arbitration panel on discovery motions, including motions related to redactions of PII in German custodial data
• Deposed opposing party’s corporate representative to uncover and establish adversary’s discovery process failures

Advanced Technology & Consulting

• Performed on-site installation and maintenance of Relativity appliance in Germany, allowing for data minimization before export to US
• Coordinated and conducted remote data collection interviews to focus data collection; identify potential sources of PII, IP, and other protected data; and track data collection across matters for re-use or supplementation
• Used Relativity appliance to evaluate search terms and filters prior to export, reducing data exported, increasing responsiveness rate, and providing necessary support for negotiations and legal arguments on burden
• Seamlessly and securely managed approved data exports from German-based Relativity appliance to US-based RelativityOne instance

Managed Review & Custom Technology-Assisted Review Workflows

• Leveraged analytics and custom Relativity tools—including email threading, concept clustering, privilege log automation, continuous active learning, and data visualization— to improve accuracy and efficiency of managed document review
• Implemented predictive coding and other technology-assisted review workflows to reduce the volume of documents needing manual review before production by over 150,000 documents and to facilitate efficient review and analysis of an adversary’s massive production of over 3.5 million documents.
• Developed managed review workflows to ensure work product and review tagging was leveraged across multiple matters without duplication of effort or inconsistency
• Staffed and managed multi-lingual review team and developed translation workflow in coordination with client and merits counsel
• Leveraged custom-built deduplication tools to identify duplicate documents in productions received from opposing parties
• Applied custom-built master workspace technology to host one set of client data that fed multiple, separate workspaces used by different merits counsel and allowed work product to be shared as required
• Oversaw all aspects of review, production, and analysis of productions received to leverage knowledge gained at all phases across multiple matters

eMerge client required assistance identifying and removing data relating to competitors from systems and devices of target company to meet the deal terms of acquisition.

The Challenges

• Short time period for compliance so that deal could close on schedule
• Limited budget
• Complex data sources and types stored in decentralized repositories
• Lack of tools or support from target company

eMerge Solutions

• Conducted remote and onsite data collection, including interviews and imaging of devices, to identify sources requiring remediation
• Applied custom solutions, search terms, and other analytics to identify documents requiring remediation and deletion
• Conducted technology-assisted review of data set to confirm files for deletion
• Mapped results to original sources to isolate files for permanent deletion and document compliance with required remediation terms

eMerge helped client identify, preserve, collect, and produce terabytes of data in response to antitrust investigations by multiple state attorneys general and the DOJ, and leveraged the knowledge gained about the client’s systems and data to assist merits counsel with discovery in related class action lawsuits.

The Challenges

• Extensive reach of government investigation, which sought documents from as far back as the 1980s and required collection from legacy data sources and systems, former and deceased custodians, hard copy files, and current custodians who worked remotely
• Comply with EU data privacy laws and US discovery requirements
• Meet varying technical and substantive requirements for production to DOJ and state attorneys general
• Adhere to deadlines and production requirements of multiple parallel litigation matters while ensuring consistency in work product
• Track productions and work product across various matters and multiple law firms to ensure consistency

eMerge Solutions

eDiscovery Advocacy

• Coordinated with client’s privacy counsel to develop defensible workflows for handling cross-border data
• Assisted merits counsel with negotiating scope limitations with the government by leveraging information gained during data collection interviews, testing of search terms, and analysis of structured data repositories
• Leveraged prior work product from parallel governmental investigations in separate class action litigation

Advanced Technology & Consulting

• Developed Stub Finder, a custom email stub deduplication tool to match incomplete email stubs in active mailboxes of custodians with complete versions of emails in separate email archive to remove the stubs from the review universe, reducing volume of emails for review by over 40%
• Applied custom master workspace technology to host one set of client data that fed multiple, separate workspaces for different but related matters, allowing work product to be shared as needed and reducing hosting fees by over 50%

Managed Review Using Technology-Assisted Review Workflows

• Leveraged analytics and custom Relativity tools—including email threading, concept clustering, and privilege log generator—to improve accuracy and efficiency of managed document review
• Developed managed review workflows to ensure work product and review tagging were propagated across multiple matters without duplication of effort or inconsistency
• Staffed and managed multi-lingual review team and developed translation workflow in cooperation with client and merits counsel
• Provided support, consultation, and project management for review staffed and managed by separate outside merits counsel to ensure consistency across matters and to reduce costs to client

Company with growing litigation profile engaged eMerge to assess its current eDiscovery and litigation response plans and processes to identify potential issues and craft an appropriate strategy for managing ESI, including implementing and releasing legal holds.

The Challenges

• Client implementation of new technologies and tools, including migration to Microsoft Office 365, required new approaches to legal hold and litigation response process
• Lack of coordination between IT, legal, and business units created divergent data sources, potential gaps in preservation, and unclear chain of authority
• Legacy systems and document retention practices created large volumes of data with no business purpose
• Limited and outdated documentation related to systems and processes

eMerge Solutions

Legal & Technology Consulting

• Conducted interviews of client IT, legal, HR, and business staff to assess specific concerns, current processes, litigation profile, and key systems for preservation and collection
• Reviewed current legal hold, data use, and records retention policies
• Drafted litigation readiness assessment identifying specific low, medium, and high risk areas for consideration and suggesting options for remediation
• Provided training to client’s IT and legal team on use of Office 365 compliance tools, including legal hold, collection, and analysis
• Consulted with client regarding options for preservation of mobile devices, including both legal and technical risks and benefits
• Drafted litigation response plan, including template legal hold and tracking forms

eMerge analyzed the contents of email mailboxes that may have been accessed during a data breach incident to timely identify whether any personally identifiable information was exposed that may trigger the notice requirements of multiple state and federal agency regulators. Our active consulting role included getting to know our client and its data and coordinating with breach counsel to defensibly reduce the volume of data requiring manual review.

By taking on more aspects of the process, including tasks that may traditionally be performed by a forensics vendor (applying search terms) or breach counsel (using technology to refine notification list and make final review calls), we accurately, defensibly, and cost-effectively helped our client identify the necessary notice recipients within the required time frame.

The Challenges

• Aggressive deadlines for notice requirements that do not consider complexity and volume of data to be analyzed
• Numerous stakeholders to coordinate including client, breach counsel, forensic investigation team, notice vendor, and insurer
• Constantly evolving scope of review as forensic team continued investigation
• Large spreadsheets of customer data
• Lack of standard forms used for intake of customer data

eMerge Solutions

eDiscovery Strategy

• Leveraged knowledge of client’s business, industry, and data analytics to prioritize data likely to contain PII and to cull data not likely to contain PII
• Used early case assessment tools to refine search terms and file type analysis to remove data from manual review
• Identified high risk documents containing PII, and used technology-assisted review and categorization to isolate similar documents for priority review and extraction of required notification details

Managed Review

• Project management and high-level strategic consulting to harmonize multiple review tracks, including technology-assisted review, advanced legal review, linear review, notice element data entry, and quality control

Advanced Technology

• Leveraged proprietary workflows and technology for drafting final notification list to reduce manual data entry
• Applied custom technology to generate fielded export so that breach counsel could analyze potential notification data sets and cull and sort data as needed
• Used automated redaction tools and repeated content filters to isolate PII

A client facing an expansive Civil Investigative Demand (CID) from the U.S. Department of Justice turned to eMerge to craft a response strategy that would meet stringent DOJ standards while remaining within tight budgetary limitations. 

The Challenges

• CID focused on topics central to client’s operation, implicating 2.5 million documents
• Tight response timetable coincided almost entirely with COVID-19 pandemic
• Official DOJ guidance regarding predictive coding still modeled after outmoded TAR 1.0 methodologies
• Litigation team separately needed to quickly identify and assess underlying issues reflected in document set

eMerge Solutions

eDiscovery Advocacy & Strategy

• Negotiated a protocol with the DOJ predicated on the use of continuous active learning (TAR 2.0) to define our outgoing production that met the DOJ’s heightened statistical and validation requirements for using predictive coding while requiring no client disclosure of either substantive coding information or examples of non-responsive documents
• Devised and implemented a mid-review workflow adjustment in response to unexpected client resource constraints due to the economic downturn caused by COVID-19, providing client with viable options for further reducing the costs of the review

Managed Review & Custom Technology-Assisted Review Workflows

• Facilitated an accelerated, highly efficient deep dive into the key factual issues that governed the core of the investigation via an active learning-powered review of just 4% of the documents in the population.
• Successfully redirected the focus of the review to new avenues of inquiry as the case team learned about critical events and decisions, and as more nuanced factual questions came to light, enabling the case to advise our client earlier in the process on how the DOJ investigation was likely to impact its business
• Used the results of the earlier issue-focused CAL review to triage predicted-responsive documents based on their proximity to the central issues of the case, allowing QC efforts and staffing to be adjusted to give more attention to the most important documents being produced, while saving costs on the remainder