Peer to Peer Magazine

Fall 2016

The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association

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61 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Six Sigma in E-Discovery FEATURES EVAN BENJAMIN Evan Benjamin is a Computer Forensic Examiner, SQL DBA and CEDS Certified Relativity Administrator who currently works at Nelson Mullins Encompass in Columbia, South Carolina. He has been in the forensic and e-discovery industry for eight years in various states. Evan has earned Six Sigma Green Belt and ITIL certifications, contributed to the ACEDS Exam Prep Manual, and helped create and review items for the CEDS exam. He also contributed to the development of the EDRM Maturity Model and loves to discuss emerging legal technology topics. Contact Evan at evan.benjamin@nelsonmullins.com. How Six Sigma Can Help Legal Definition: Six Sigma is a disciplined process and logical style of project management that focuses on developing and delivering near-perfect services consistently. It uses statistical tools and project work to achieve quantum gains in quality. You apply these tools to review and improve the processes used to accomplish your tasks. Six Sigma began in the manufacturing field but is now used in a wide variety of businesses to improve efficiency and reduce costly mistakes. In the legal arena, Six Sigma can be used to reduce costs associated with e-discovery in particular and litigation in general. How? It improves manual processes by increasing their accuracy. It provides a framework against which to defend your processes if you are challenged during litigation. It helps you define your processes so anyone (aorneys, litigation support and technology staff ) can comprehend them and improve their workflows. The key is process. For a process to function at a Six Sigma level, it can only have 3.4 defects per million opportunities. This means a document reviewer functioning at this level would make a mistake on about three out of one million documents being reviewed. Do you need this level of accuracy for every process and every task? For example, a Sigma level four would yield 6,210 defects per million opportunities (DPMO); the document reviewer would make a mistake on about six out of every thousand documents. If that works for your organization, aspire toward four Sigma as your goal. 1 2 3 How many defects do you encounter in your daily workflows? Why do you keep making the same mistakes over and over in your attempts to be defensible and reasonable in e-discovery? The best way to answer questions like this is to embrace the time-tested project management style known as Six Sigma. Key Takeaway: At a Six Sigma level, there will be no more than four defects for every one million opportunities to do any part of a process. Most legal professionals and e-discovery practitioners resist using statistical thought or theory within their work process but regularly face statistical terms like "precision" and "recall" when using technology-assisted review tools. It makes sense, then, to calculate the performance of e-discovery tools by determining how many defects your processes produce for any batch of documents. Start by applying Six Sigma principles to everything you do, including filing lawsuit responses, responding to subpoenas, applying legal holds and performing collections. You might perform at a four Sigma level for some functions (e.g., responding on a timely basis to a subpoena) but a lower Sigma level for other functions (e.g., performing collections or productions). Forcing You To Ask "Why" Think about the flow of an e-discovery project: » You receive a large document population needing review. » You hire inexperienced first-level document reviewers to review these documents. » You engage more experienced second-level reviewers to correct or overturn the decisions of the first-level review team. » You develop keyword search terms to cull the universe of documents further, which leads to more time and review and culling. Frustrating? Six Sigma can help.

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