A U.K.-based client was notified of a suspected legal issue that had the potential to scale to a multi-jurisdiction investigation. The organisation’s legal team sought to quickly review a population of documents to ascertain the validity of the matter in advance of a board meeting at which key decisions would be made about how to move forward. FTI Technology’s Acuity® Managed Review team and e-discovery experts were engaged to conduct a Find Facts Fast review.

Situation

While handling tight timelines and a sensitive internal discovery exercise, FTI Technology’s team was tasked with quickly reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents associated with 30+ custodians to identify whether they contained any pertinent information that could validate or shed light on the suspected legal issue.

In addition to traditional electronic documents, communications and PST files, the dataset also contained files from Microsoft Teams. Adding to the complexity of collecting the data and loading it into a format that was compatible with the review platform and analytics workflows.

An added challenge was the possibility that the dataset may have contained material subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which narrowly restrict the access to physical materials or technical data containing information about US defence and military technologies. This required FTI to retain document review attorneys in the United States with the requisite profile and establish a workflow for them to conduct the initial screening for ITAR material.

Our Role

FTI Technology’s Find Facts Fast solution was essential to completing this matter within the client’s time frame. Find Facts Fast leverages FTI Technology’s analytics experts and researchers to analyse and evaluate large datasets using advanced analytics and data visualisations. This provides identification of important documents and key themes within them quickly.

Unlike a linear review, Find Facts Fast provides the key facts and insights that legal teams need to understand a matter and develop a strategy. Given the circumstances in this client engagement, this approach was beneficial for providing a clear and timely understanding of the facts so the legal team could make critical decisions quickly. Utilising the Find Facts Fast approach significantly reduced the time required for the law firm to develop their understanding of the key facts and themes in the case. This included the identification of key documents within the first few days of review, which helped inform their strategy when preparing for witness interviews and discussions with expert advisors. In contrast, the results of a full-scope first-pass review would have resulted in a gradual promotion of key documents and themes, which would have extended the time required to conduct the interviews and made it untenable for the client to meet the reporting deadline of under one month.

FTI’s global Acuity footprint was instrumental in facilitating this cross-border review to meet the deadline. Within 48 hours, FTI’s recruitment teams staffed over 100 qualified document review attorneys in the United States and European Union, allowing for a swift ITAR screen which continuously funneled documents into the U.K.-based Find Facts Fast research queue and on to counsel.

Our Impact

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FTI Technology revealed key facts from hundreds of thousands of documents for a sensitive legal matter within a matter of days launching complementary cross-border review teams to support critical data screening and fact research.

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The Find Facts Fast approach provided the client with an efficient, effective and precise solution to find and understand substantive documents quickly. This approach resulted in the team analysing over 300,000 documents, resulting in a reduction in the number of documents for review to just 5% of the total population and providing over 6,000 relevant documents to assist counsel in deciding on the matter.

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More than 500 key documents were surfaced, with the first key documents being identified on day one of review. This provided significant time savings and helped inform legal counsel’s strategy when preparing for witness interviews and audit-related discussions. The ability to prioritize relevant material and reduce the review set also made it possible for the legal team to meet the tight reporting deadline.