Crown Commercial Service's e-Disclosure and Review Services Framework (RM6336)

Managed Document Review has been a core service offering for more than 22 years. We have experience with document review varying in size, industry and legal subject matter. Most importantly, we understand the delicate balance of technology assistance and the need for live review teams.

For an effective eDiscovery function, the tools cannot stand on their own. They must be accompanied by strategic oversight, advice and support upon a project management foundation. We use this approach to provide:

Managed Document Review 

• Serve as collaborative partner to your legal department.
• Able to start up quickly and flexibly deploying an experienced review team to meet evolving project requirements.
• Utilise advanced reporting to provide real time views into project data on relevance determination, issue categorisation and other client priorities.
• Ensure reviews are completed on time and within budget.

eDiscovery

• Scalable collection, processing and hosting to support any size matter.
• Volume reducing analytics including email threading, de duplication and concept clustering.
• Precision enhancing AI and defensible machine learning including Continuous Active Learning (CAL).
• Technology consultation to find the right tools for data challenges.

• As an agnostic eDiscovery provider, we are able to flex our technology stack and drive advancements in this sector through our innovation teams and lab.
•  We provide expertise in developing bespoke automations and “plugins” to help clients achieve their outcomes quicker and more efficiently.
• Our teams focus on developing standard processes and playbooks to ensure continuity, manage costs and increase efficiencies on client cases.
• DWF supports clients in handling large, multi-jurisdictional eDiscovery, litigation, compliance and DSAR matters across disparate data types
• We feature a team with experience innovating solutions to client data challenges surrounding chat and other industry/client specific data sources to facilitate cost effective and high quality review and disclosure.

Client challenge
The client received a third-party subpoena to produce documents related to an energy company from which the client purchased ethanol receivables. Our client wanted to understand the exact cost and timeframe to complete the review of the potentially relevant documents, while limiting the overall cost and time spent by the client’s internal resources. The client was a third party to the litigation and, as a result, had limited exposure outside of producing the requested documents.

DWF's solution
We reviewed the pertinent documents for the litigation using Ringtail, an eDiscovery tool. We were able to leverage the experience of internal resources using Ringtail to create a workflow that streamlined the review and ensured both high quality and productivity throughout the review. We also performed redactions on the review set, with support from the Ringtail redaction capabilities.

Key outcomes

• The team was able to engage directly with in-house counsel and utilise its managed review service to complete the review, maintaining high quality and efficiency.
• We were able to leverage the technology skill sets of our team members to utilise the review tool to create a review and redaction workflow that fostered quality and efficiency.
• We offered a pricing structure that allowed the client to be aware of the cost of the review before work even began, which provided the client full visibility of the exact cost for the entire review.

Client challenge
The client received a third-party subpoena to produce documents related to an energy company from which the client purchased ethanol receivables. Our client wanted to understand the exact cost and timeframe to complete the review of the potentially relevant documents, while limiting the overall cost and time spent by the client’s internal resources. The client was a third party to the litigation and, as a result, had limited exposure outside of producing the requested documents.

DWF's solution
We reviewed the pertinent documents for the litigation using Ringtail, an eDiscovery tool. We were able to leverage the experience of internal resources using Ringtail to create a workflow that streamlined the review and ensured both high quality and productivity throughout the review. We also performed redactions on the review set, with support from the Ringtail redaction capabilities.

Key outcomes

• The team was able to engage directly with in-house counsel and utilise its managed review service to complete the review, maintaining high quality and efficiency.
• We were able to leverage the technology skill sets of our team members to utilise the review tool to create a review and redaction workflow that fostered quality and efficiency.
• We offered a pricing structure that allowed the client to be aware of the cost of the review before work even began, which provided the client full visibility of the exact cost for the entire review.

Client challenge
Our client, a recycling and waste management company, was involved in an unfair prejudice proceedings in the English High Court related to a complex joint venture dispute. The client started with 320,000 documents and had less than 4 weeks of time for DWF to complete the review. The documents needed to be reviewed for Relevance, Privilege and 33 issue codes. 

DWF’s solution
DWF was able to assign a team of 50 people within 24 hours of the client request. Using a pod team structure we were able to drive feedback within the team that resulted in consistency, quality and efficiency. We worked with a law firm and a technology team to develop a machine learning workflow that reduced the number of documents from 320,000 to 90,000, reducing the cost significantly and also ensuring we met the timeline. 

Key outcomes

• We created a custom workflow using the Relativity machine learning feature to bring relevant documents to the top of the review population. As a result of the workflow, we created a daily delivery schedule that enabled DWF to QC new documents on a daily basis and feed the active learning workflow to get the best outcome from the machine learning.
• We brought flexibility and scalability to staffing - after a few days of review using active learning, the number of potentially relevant documents started to drop; as a result not all the reviewers were required on a day to day basis, and the number fluctuated on a daily basis. We created a core and flex team to respond to the daily document fluctuations. While the core team reviewed the documents throughout, reviewers from the flex team were selected on a daily basis based on the required throughput for the day. 
• We escalated issues and key documents right from the first day of review using the escalation process. As a result, DWF identified enhancements to the coding instructions and thus modified their strategy around the definition and scope of issue codes. DWF was able to bring these changes very early in the review without impacting many documents.
• Using active learning and a dynamic and flexible staffing solution, our client was able to meet an aggressive disclosure deadline while the adverse party was unable to comply with the deadline. The failure to comply with the disclosure deadline was then leveraged to force the adverse party to settle the matter.