Situation

Our client was engaged to assist on a dispute that had a very tight deadline for review. The client instructed us that their 3 Outlook mailboxes needed to be collected, processed and made available for review as soon as possible so that they could begin an urgent review.

Solution

To minimise the time it would take to collect the data, reduce the reviewable dataset and in turn reduce review times, we immediately scheduled a scoping meeting between our collection experts, our client and their end-client. These discussions allowed us to narrow the scope of the collection with reference to critical time periods and key stakeholders. However, this meeting also uncovered the use of several GMail accounts for critical communications relevant to the review. We were able to work with the end-client to have them self-authenticate and give us quick and remote access to the relevant Office and GMail accounts. The 70GB of potentially relevant email data was collected and made available for review within 24 hours of the authentication and provided to our eDiscovery team for processing and upload to the review workspace.

Impact

Our expert guidance and quick execution of the collection process, remotely, allowed our client to:

• Identify critical document sources that may have been missed without early consultation with the collection experts

• Reduce the volume of data collected, processed, and reviewed by involving all stakeholders in early conversations

• Commence their investigation in the shortest time frame possible, providing more time for the legal team to undertake the work and analyse critical documents

• Limit the burden placed on the end-client's IT personnel, facilitating the quickest and most accurate collection solution