Case Study
FTI Technology Provides Rapid Discovery and Fact Finding for Multinational Client Facing International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration
A large, U.S.-based multinational organization made a fast withdrawal of its business from Russia when the country went to war with Ukraine, spurring an arbitration in the International Chamber of Commerce court. The company and its counsel engaged FTI Technology for e-discovery and fact finding, to comply with ICC rules and deadlines and prepare a strong defense.
Situation
With no access to the witnesses based in Russia and uncertainty of whether any relevant documents had survived the exit, the company had almost no visibility into available evidence. While most e-discovery matters begin with at least some degree of awareness of what information is accessible and needed, this matter started in near total obscurity.
ICC arbitrations are also typically very fast moving, which put the client under added pressure to meet strict deadlines and requirements. Counsel needed to quickly conduct discovery across a population of nearly 70,000 documents, most of which were in Russian and other European languages.
Our Role
Due to an existing relationship with the client, FTI Technology’s e-discovery experts were able to onboard to the matter immediately. Given the limited visibility into available data and the demanding time constraints, the team recognized that implementing an innovative workflow was essential to address the requirements of the matter. The team proposed starting with FTI Technology’s analytic research methodology Find Facts Fast to gain early insights and help inform the review strategy.
FTI Technology’s solution included:
- Close collaboration with counsel, which enabled a continuous feedback loop to refine the strategy as the matter progressed.
- Rapid filtering and Find Facts Fast research to surface numerous highly relevant documents within the first 24 hours, providing the team with guideposts of where to focus for further analysis and review.
- Advanced search techniques and analytics to provide fast and reliable results and reduce the document population sent for full review.
- Search term refinement in the second phase to further narrow the review and production populations.
- Ongoing support for the client during negotiations and compulsory productions.
Our Impact
- Using an expert-led approach and its proprietary Find Facts Fast methodology, FTI Technology helped the client complete a thorough discovery exercise and sound defense under a compressed timeline. The findings supported the client in pursuing a fair and equitable resolution to a high-stakes matter in international court.
- By narrowing the linear review population by 97%, FTI Technology’s experts enabled counsel to focus on strategy and substance. In addition to uncovering key information from multi-language documents, the approach lowered review costs by more than 90%.
- The outcome reinforced FTI Technology’s role as a trusted advisor, leading the client to request Find Facts Fast for future matters.