Peer to Peer Magazine

22 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | WINTER 2017 BEST PRACTICES Managing Maer Mobility: Reducing the Burden of Departing Client Files As in civil discovery, technological advancements can help transform the maer mobility process, reducing its burden and making maer mobility issues more tolerable. An Innovative Approach to Matter Mobility The experience of an Am Law 100 firm (who has asked to remain confidential due to the nature of the subject) demonstrates how technology can transform the maer mobility process. As a large, global firm, this organization experiences its fair share of lateral movement as aorneys join and leave the firm. To help ease the client transfer process, the firm decided to focus on adding efficiency and repeatability to its process. The process begins with an agent-based, enterprise-wide forensic platform "that can reach out and basically identify and pull everything in a maer," as a security and forensics manager at the firm explains. That platform proves particularly helpful in pre release review, allowing the firm to pull relevant documents from a variety of endpoints quickly. Once the documents have been gathered in a maer mobility warehouse, they can be uploaded onto a discovery and document management platform and processed for review. Discovery soware does not necessarily create efficiency and ease, of course. Old technology, expensive vendors and slow review have given ediscovery a reputation as, well, old, expensive and slow. But with modern technologies that no longer needs to be the case. Law firms can now "drag and drop" data to a discovery platform; slow, expensive data ingestion is automated and documents are secured and automatically processed. Such soware can automate processes such as OCR scanning, text extraction, full audit logging, deduplication, de-NISTing, virus scanning, file-type detection, embedded file extraction, hidden content detection, family document grouping, indexing and metadata preservation, to name a handful. Once the data is loaded, review can begin quickly. Bulk culling and auto-tagging reduce the need for eyes- on review. The more sophisticated the review platform's search capabilities are, the beer. This firm, for example, uses what its forensics manager describes as "extremely intelligent, customized searching" that can "very rapidly identify the 'trouble children' and what should not exit out of our environment. The more intelligent our search has become," the forensics manager explains, the smaller and smaller those numbers get. Discovery technology can also ease the burdens and uncertainty surrounding production. Once review is concluded with the firm is able to customize the delivery format, allowing it to output productions that are compatible for the new firm's environment. A platform with secured production can also help create a built-in audit trail. Aer review is completed the firm uses a secured download link to share data that is leaving the firm, with permission-based access granted temporarily before expiring. Once the files are accessed, the firm is notified via email. Unlike with shipped CDs or DVDs, this secure sharing removes the risk of a party saying it never received the production. Now when a party claims that something was not produced, the firm can turn around and point to the audit trail. When Attorneys "Go Rogue" with Firm Data There is also the reality that some lawyers will aempt to take data outside official channels. Some aorneys may aempt to remove electronic records, perhaps via email or file transfer, before they have announced their Law firms can now "drag and drop" data to a discovery platform; slow, expensive data ingestion is automated and documents are secured and automatically processed.

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