Situation

Our client was engaged in a dispute before the Supreme Court of Victoria. Our client and the opposing party were negotiating the scope of the discovery and the associated workflows that should be adopted for each party to comply with their discovery obligations.

The opposing party claimed that due to how they structured their IT systems and the issues in dispute, they would need to restore email backups (captured three times a day) over the critical period. Due to the number of staff, the opposing party estimated that the potentially relevant data set would amount to between 10,000+ TB, costing $4M to collect and process the data, let alone host and review.

The opposing party claimed this was disproportionate to the claim's value and complexity and that a very narrow approach with minimal data should be adopted. Our client disagreed and required our assistance to determine a workflow that would yield a proportionate level of discovery without being unnecessarily restrictive.

Solution

Our experts worked with the legal team to understand the critical issues in this matter and build an appropriate and proportionate workflow, focusing on key stakeholders and periods. More data was to be collected more frequently for those more important stakeholders over more important periods, with fewer data collected for less important stakeholders. It was estimated that there would be between 2-3 TB of data collected with this collection workflow.

Further, we suggested that the collected data be uploaded to an early case assessment workspace for detailed interrogation and analysis. Utilising de-duplications, keyword searching and key date culling methodologies, we estimated that the reviewable dataset should, conservatively, be between 500 and 1500GB.

Our experts also provided our law firm clients with estimates of time and fees associated with managing the proposed workflow, which was utilised in discussions with the other side and the Court, ultimately seeing a version of this workflow accepted as the approved approach in this matter.

Impact

Our expert's support in developing an appropriate workflow, along with estimates of time and fees, allowed our client to:

• Get a different perspective on the proposed workflows, including how what was proposed aligns with technical best practices, highlighting some areas that could benefit from changes and resulting reductions in volume and fees

• Develop a technical workflow, timing and fees that informed a strong negotiating position with the opposing party

• Adopt a workflow that sees them obtaining more data than initially proposed but that is proportionate to the value and complexity of the dispute.