Case Study: International Financial Services Company Conducts Proof of Concept and Utilizes Enhanced Associate Solutions for Second Level Review
- Enhanced Associate Solutions (EAS)
Client
International Financial Services Company
Location
North America
Client need
Faced with the company’s overall need to reduce costs, the client’s General Counsel issued a dictate requiring the global litigation teams to significantly cut outside legal spend. One area the litigation team identified for possible cost savings was second level review work historically performed by its outside law firm.
Client solution
The company was willing to consider Epiq’s Enhanced Associate Solutions (EAS) for second level review, but wanted assurances that the work product would be of the same high quality they were accustomed to receiving from outside counsel. To test the Epiq team, Epiq devised a Proof of Concept (POC) that pitted the actual outside counsel team against Epiq’s EAS for a current discovery matter.
The Proof of Concept
- Epiq randomly selected 1,000 documents that had gone through the Epiq first level review process – 800 were coded Responsive and 200 were coded Not Responsive.
- Outside counsel assigned two of their Case Analyst team members to the project. Epiq assigned two EAS Second Level team members to the project.
- Both teams worked on the second level review POC over a two-day period.
Productivity
- The Epiq review team averaged 60.61 documents per hour.
- Outside counsel’s review team averaged 25.33 documents per hour.
POC Results
- The two teams consistently coded 891 documents, or 89.10% of the POC population. The second level coding varied on 109 documents, or 10.9% of the POC population.
- To understand the differences in coding, the two teams set up a validation meeting to discuss the results, which included two associates on the outside counsel team.
- The outside counsel team looked at all of the documents that had different responsiveness coding.
- Outside counsel concluded that the bulk of the documents on which there were differences were borderline in nature, meaning the responsiveness call was not immediately clear from the face of the document. Therefore, Counsel concluded that it was reasonable for the review teams to reach different results.
- The Epiq and outside counsel teams submitted a joint report to the client’s General Counsel, the Head of Litigation in the U.S., and the law firm’s Partner in charge of the case. Based on the work that was completed and the subsequent validation discussion between the teams, the report concluded: “Epiq’s second level review was comparable to the review by the [Counsel] review team. The tagging was generally consistent, and inconsistencies occurred on borderline documents.”
Following the POC, the Epiq EAS team performed second level analysis of ongoing first level document review, to both finalize coding and refine the final production set in collaboration with counsel. The Epiq EAS team continues to provide second level review on other relevant matters.
Why Epiq
Epiq had provided traditional eDiscovery services for the company for many years, including first level review, for a wide range of litigation matters and government investigations. Due to longstanding interactions with Epiq, the company learned of Epiq’s highly trained EAS team with capabilities for Second Level Review and Analysis. Additionally, the company liked the fact that Epiq’s EAS offers significantly reduced rates and sophisticated use of technology when compared with outside counsel, due to Epiq’s substantive experience and access to the latest analytics and AI tools
Results and Benefits
87%
Reduction in costs.
100%
Increase in speed for second level review.
100%
Same high quality as utilizing outside counsel.