Modern investigations are changing rapidly, with challenges in data volume, complexity, diversity and scarce resources forming a perfect storm threatening to blow away investigative processes not optimised for modern challenges.
The challenges of modern investigations involving the review of communication and documents are forcing many in-house legal teams and law firms to review their investigative practices. Investigators are well aware of the challenges, and rarely is there one standard type of investigation. There are formal regulatory investigations, say for the ACCC or ASIC, employee relations investigations, suspected IP theft or compliance investigations. These may all require different processes, diverse data types, and stakeholders. The methods used for investigating IP theft, for instance, differ from that for employee relations breaches. Whether your needs are to meet formal protocols or more straightforward investigations that only need to uncover the truth, a flexible, scalable balance of technology and consulting may offer legal teams compelling efficiencies in their investigation, for example, Law in Order's data collections team can help simplify the process of data identification, preservation and collection. Important information can be accessed quickly, and our team can even provide affidavits for the work or provide expert witnesses in an investigation.
Scale, Flexibility and Balance
However, before you consider what technology or advisory help you may need, it's worth asking yourself this question; Do you find yourself manually pawing through endless documents? There has been a considerable growth in data volumes for many law firms and in-house teams in recent years, but the other modern investigative challenges make a case for technology, AI, automation, and specialist expertise.
Diversified data formats and a growing number of distributed data sources compound the challenges of increasing data volume. This complexity means that your current investigative practices may need to be updated or augmented. This is where an end-to-end approach to your data needs blended with scalable, flexible advisory may be a more balanced approach. Even with the best technology assisting your investigation, you may still need outsourced expertise. Not every case enjoys a large litigation review team to help manage the sheer volume of data. Our consulting teams can step in with their expertise in managing large, complex data sets using advanced AI. This expertise pairs with technology that helps deliver better insights faster and dramatically reduce the time and effort associated with review. However, one of the greatest benefits of our consulting team is that we can actively work with you to understand the scope of your challenges and then leverage our expertise and industry experience to design a bespoke solution to your case needs.
Advanced Investigation Workflow with RelativityOne
Many legal teams are augmenting their investigations with outsourced expertise and leading data technology from a vendor such as RelativityOne. This scalable and adaptable approach amplifies your efforts by leveraging expertise with world-class, AI-driven technology to integrate all these capabilities to maximise your productivity.
Other legacy investigative processes may also need revisiting; trying to pass sensitive files between different apps and platforms may be less efficient and have security implications. In addition, many of these apps and platforms don't have the functionality to search across all modern file types. Law In Order partnered with RelativityOne to tackle current investigative challenges with a powerful but single, unified technology solution that leverages the expertise of our consulting, forensic & review teams with your investigative resources.
Specialist Applications
Your investigation's scoping and collections phase may benefit from outsourced capabilities using technology like RelativityOne Collect. Collect is an easy-to-use application for collecting your custodian's Google Workspace data, Microsoft 365 emails and documents, Slack messages and other data. The time saved by quickly and efficiently collecting relevant data can be a game-changer for investigators.
What if you need to quickly remove sensitive personal information to protect the anonymity of an employee or witness? How about automating the markup of documents with images?
RelativityOne's Redact allows you to apply markups to imaged documents, Excel files, and PDF files manually or automatically.
Do you have hours of video or audio files you want to quickly search and review? Veritone's AIware integrated into RelativityOne allows for machine-driven speech to text conversion. It enables you to search and jump to key sections of video and audio files to cut down hours of listening through audio.
Unified platforms that integrate applications like these offer seamless, flexible assistance to any investigation. But applications on their own may not be the total solution:
How Consultants can Support Specialist Applications and Technology
One of the benefits of having experienced consultants is knowing which aspects of an application or technology is helpful for a particular matter. An experienced consultant can assist with setting up a structure so that, if a matter does suddenly grow, the technology and processes can quickly adapt without delays and the costs associated with it.
A good example involving Law In Order's consultants was a small matter where technology was applied, and the correct structures were put in place from the beginning. The matter was completed within two days; without using the technology to reduce the data required for review, the client would not have taken on the claim.
It is also important to remember that it is not just about the technology and how to use it. It is critical to undertake a scoping exercise at the outset to identify relevant data sources. Some important questions to ask are: Have all the sources been considered? Can your team confidently say they've done everything they can to ensure that this was an appropriate process and use of technology? If there's any doubt at all, outsourced consulting may provide that certainty.
Delivering Winning Outcomes
Modern investigations are changing rapidly, with challenges in data volume, complexity, diversity and scarce resources forming a perfect storm threatening to blow away investigative processes not optimised for modern challenges. Integrating a unified technology solution with expertise across the full spectrum of your data and investigation needs may be the most efficient way to balance your resources to maximise a winning outcome. However, as Law in Order's e2eDiscovery group advises, that expertise must be available to your team globally, support different technology-assisted review models and workflows and apply rigorous QA processes. Regular communications and real-time reporting ensure that the performance of the review can be closely monitored and maximised. End-to-end expertise that is scalable across all technology infrastructures and able to scale quickly to changing case needs gives you the most flexible, adaptable and efficient approach to investigations.