Situation

We assisted our client to review their digital document repositories with a view to reducing potential reviewable documents sets. At first review the total dataset relevant to the dispute was estimated to be more than 150GB of data and over 500,000 documents. The dispute was relatively low value and the legal team and client sought guidance around the ways in which they might reduce the burden of review to something more proportionate.

Solution

Our collection team worked closely with our client to understand their file storage systems and, through a risk-based approach, we helped the end-client identify a critical dataset of approximately 50GB. This data was promoted for processing which included, amongst other things, the removal of duplicates. As the data related to three people working across the same projects there was quite a bit of duplication. Our technical de-duplication process was able to remove 56,000 documents from the review set. Further, we were able to run our “junk file” processes which also identified over 22,000 files that would otherwise be deemed junk. Overall, the data set was reduced by over 85% through this workflow.

Impact

The impact this workflow solution allowed our client to:

• Use the end-client knowledge of file systems to perform a targeted collection of priority documents and cut down review volumes with limited time and cost

• Take further, inexpensive de-duplication and junk removal steps to further reduce the reviewable document set, ultimately reducing the burden of review in this matter

• Reduce the risk associated with a manual de-duplication and junk removal process