Situation

Our client was involved in a dispute that required reviewing large volumes of corporate communications. During the data identification stage, it was established that the company communicated extensively using the Slack messenger application.

The legal team had collected and reviewed Slack data on a prior matter and understood it to be challenging. Collection ordinarily requires the execution of a two-stage process. Public and private channels, group chats, and direct messages (IMs) can be exported in JSON format.

Unfortunately, typical workflows require the separate export of file attachments. This is because attachments in Slack are often stored separately and are not embedded directly within the message content. This introduces significant complexity to the collection process and can delay review. The legal team explored using a third-party tool to export Slack attachments; however, this would be a very slow process.

In practice, the attachment collection issue can lead to slower collection timelines, with end-to-end acquisition of messages and all associated attachments frequently taking four to five weeks. This extended duration would have impacted our client’s review readiness and significantly delayed their downstream eDiscovery workflows.

Solution

Our experts reviewed the traditional workflow to address some of these inefficiencies. Our Innovation, Technical and Consulting teams were able to develop a specialist, scalable and streamlined workflow that significantly improved the speed and precision of Slack attachment collection.

This workflow significantly accelerated the collection process for both data and related attachments. It proved almost four times faster than more typical methods.

Impact

The workflows developed by our team of experts delivered a timely and efficient solution by:

• Saving a significant amount of time on Slack data collection, completing what would normally take four to five weeks in just one week.

• Significantly reducing the risk of human error or delays using automated processes.

• Dramatically decreasing the associated costs of the collection workflow.

• Enabling the review team to begin examining the Slack data earlier.