Leveraging Search for E-Discovery Compliance

For attorneys in the midst of complex litigation, the term “e-discovery” need not be explained. To the CTO of a large, global
organization, e-discovery might not be as familiar, but is no less significant, thanks to amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and more specifically, laws concerning the discovery of electronically stored information.

Whatever your familiarity or level of involvement with e-discovery, without question the topic is affecting a greater number of business professionals each day. And with the emergence of e-discovery as a market unto itself has come a host of technology solutions promising to solve all your woes with a simple signature on a vendor contract. If only it were that easy.

The fact of the matter is e-discovery is much more complex, and no single magic pill or sacred sword exists to tackle it. Just ask the legal professional who is more familiar with the technology. A recent Fulbright & Jaworski survey stated that only 19% of corporate counsel believe their companies are well prepared to handle e-discovery issues. Needless to say, there’s a lot still to be learned here.

What’s clear is enterprise search is rapidly emerging as a key component to electronic discovery and is proving to be the very technology that organizations need today to comply with FRCP, which went into effect December 1, 2006. E-discovery platforms can be adequate for searching the content within their systems, but only enterprise search enables you to simultaneously search across all of your critical repositories, from file servers and databases to email archives and individual PCs.

Need additional convincing as to the importance of e-discovery? Ask a certain investment banking firm about its $1.4
billion defeat (that’s billion, with a “b”).1

Critical Capabilities

Not all enterprise search software is the same, and conducting a review of the various technologies can be a daunting task, given the diversity in functionality, pricing and support models. Perhaps you already have enterprise search in action at your organization, in which case it makes sense to extend these capabilities to address your new e-discovery needs. Whether you’re looking to do this or turn to enterprise search for the first time, here’s a snapshot of what you’ll need to look for to ensure compliance is made as easy as possible:

Broad file format and language support: The essence of e-discovery means learning a great deal more about an unknown set of content, which means the repositories you’re searching could include dozens of document types in a handful of different languages. Your enterprise search solution should support multiple languages (preferably via Unicode) and a wide variety of structured, semi-structured and unstructured formats, otherwise critical information could remain hidden, thus putting you in possible violation of FRCP.
Forensic indexing: In extreme cases where nothing is known about a content store, forensic indexing capabilities ensure you can index and search anything that’s electronically stored, even formats that a search engine doesn’t normally understand. If text exists in a file, forensic indexing will account for it and include it in your collection.
Multiple query methods: Depending on the user or situation, different query methods will be required. For example, it’s one thing to conduct a basic keyword search for all instances of “Steve Jones,” but because FRCP guards against so-called “fishing expeditions,” you may be permitted to search only emails where Steve Jones is the sender or documents where he is the author. Whatever the scenario, your enterprise search solution should be able to account for the various ways in which people need to search.
Results navigation: The old-school methodology of returning a long laundry list of results is extremely inefficient, particularly when it comes to e-discovery. Not only is this time-intensive, it essentially ensures you’ll miss key pieces of information. Therefore, your search
capabilities should enable you to sift and sort, drill down and further analyze. This comes in the form of classification/categorization, hit highlighting, context views and clustering capabilities.
Entity extraction for discovery: To further assist in the navigation and analysis phases, some of today’s enterprise search technologies are including entity extraction. This functionality automatically extracts key pieces of information, such as names, email addresses and more, and presents them alongside your results to enable further discovery and investigation.
Tag, annotate and extract: The ability to tag relevant results, annotate them with notes for later searching and reference, and extract them for use in trial are vital components. Without these means, your enterprise search isn’t addressing your full scope of requirements.

Given the significant differences between various enterprise search offerings, it is critical to test the capabilities of these tools prior to making any investment. A pilot project will give you the clearest indication of a vendor’s viability and if its technology enables FRCP compliance.

Established in 1988, ISYS Search Software (www.isys-search.com) is a global supplier of enterprise search solutions for business and
government. The company’s award-winning software suite offers a broad range of products designed to enable search, navigation and discovery across desktops, networks, websites, intranets and custom applications.

Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with more than 14,000 organizations worldwide, including hundreds of law firms such as: Dewey Ballentine; Faegre & Benson; Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP; Barlow, Lyde and Gilbert (UK); Perkins Coie; Holland & Hart LLP; Lionel, Sawyer & Collins; Vascoe Valdes LLP; and many more.

1. http://snipurl.com/1dhow

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