Situation

Our client was engaged to assist a company in an international arbitration. The arbitration was complex and had a quantum in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Our client was required to negotiate with the other side on the format of the exchange protocol, including an arbitration-specific component called a Redfern Schedule. The opposing party had their own internal legal technology team assisting them with the technical aspects of the protocol.

Solution

Our experts acted as our client’s legal technology team, identifying several key areas for change, including:

• Redfern Schedule Categories: Our team also assisted in building workflows that allowed for the easy identification of documents responsive to categories, using artificial intelligence to speed up category review, ensure the accuracy of category coding through various quality assurance workflows

• Extracted Text: Our team suggested that the schedule be changed to require the production of original, not extracted text, increasing text accuracy, resulting in workflows that rely on it for analytics, etc.

• Exchange Format: The initial protocol supplied adopted a US/UK exchange format, unlike Australia, where our client was located, and the format they were familiar with.

• Document Delivery: The protocol initially required the delivery of discovery on labelled CD Rom. This was updated to reflect current best practices and a more convenient and reliable delivery method.

• Translation: This matter involved translating documents into a language other than English, so changes had to be made to the protocol to ensure those documents were exchanged accurately.

Impact

Our work in supporting our client with the protocol allowed our client to:

• Ensure the protocol adopts a current best practice that would see efficient and effective workflows adopted

• Make sure that the specific nuances of this matter are accounted for in the format of the protocol

• Leverage our experience to help build workflows and processes that would see the requirements of the protocol more readily complied with throughout the matter lifecycle.