Situation

Our law firm client was under critical time pressure to collect data from a client’s Microsoft 365 environment to commence their review and comply with the relevant matter deadlines. The collection was further complicated because the client's IT infrastructure management had been outsourced to an external company. When the IT management company chose not to undertake a collection process for legal purposes, it caused delays not uncommon in this type of scenario.

Our client required specialist expertise and capacity to collect relevant data quickly and accurately. The documents relating to eight individuals over an extensive period needed to be collected in a manner that would be defensible if challenged by another party.

Solution

Sky Discovery's team of experts worked with the law firm, the end client’s in-house legal team and the external IT manager to undertake the collection work. We worked closely with the in-house legal team to identify the key custodians and appropriate relevant date ranges.

The execution of the collection was expedited by granting Sky Discovery’s experts their own company Microsoft 365 account, which allowed our team to directly access the infrastructure and leverage Microsoft Purview’s collection capability.

This whole process was completed within two days, with the collected material securely downloaded directly to Sky Discovery’s private cloud. This ensured not only the security and confidentiality of the collected material but also that the balance of the eDiscovery process, which would facilitate the review of that data by the legal team, could progress as quickly as possible.

Due to changes in matter and strategy, further urgent collection was required at a later date, including additional custodians. This request was able to be completed in a similar manner within the same day the instructions were received from the client.

Impact

This collection solution allowed our client to:

• Meet the urgent collection deadline required for this matter

• Ensure the end-client felt connected to and comfortable with the collection process by having them work with Sky Discovery’s collection team

• Maintain security and confidentiality, as well as reduce the relevant cost of the collection process by utilising technology already available to the business

• Minimise the risk associated with data collection for a legal purpose being undertaken by an IT professional who does not have experience undertaking such tasks

• Increase the effectiveness of the resulting eDiscovery workflow by having the collection work done and overseen by Sky Discovery as well as having the legal team undertake that review in Sky Discovery’s custom eDiscovery environment

• Maximise the time the legal team had access to the collected material, in turn, allowing them to spend more time working on legal matters important and relevant to the project.