Extract from Wendy Cole’s article “The Evolution of Investigation and Early Case Assessment”
Facing ever-increasing legal, regulatory and resource pressures, corporate counsel and their external legal advisors must stay ahead of the curve to protect and promote their organization’s best interests. In an investigation or potential litigation, it is critical that teams, despite a plethora of unstructured data and unknown unknowns, gain rapid access to the critical evidence to accurately assess risks, potential liability, and case strengths.
Legacy approaches
Legacy approaches to conducting investigations or early case assessment (ECA) when confronted with large volumes of electronically stored information (ESI) frequently involve ad hoc manual review of ESI in native format (e.g., email PST stores) or processing and culling data. After roughly culling the data based on limited keyword search terms, legacy approaches often resort to a full production-style review to uncover key facts and evidence. But these approaches can be inefficient, risky and slow.
A new approach
New technology from OpenText™ featuring front-loaded analytic power enables legal teams and investigators to rapidly find the key facts that can inform strategy and optimize decision making — without having to review the entire universe of ESI from the start.
