eDiscovery
The management of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in an efficient and cost-effective manner is a cornerstone of the firm’s litigation services. We understand the importance of proper preservation and collection and work with our clients to help them understand the e-discovery process. Our attorneys are experienced in cost recovery, attorney-client privilege protection, early case assessment and engaging forensic experts but are also skilled in the most advanced collection and search methods, having supervised document reviews on every scale.
- Our client, a large solar contractor, was engaged in a non-payment and delay/impact claim with a solar developer involving four separate school districts and sixteen separate schools. The contract required arbitration to take place within six weeks of filing. While the opposition was mired in paper documents and .pdf’s, Cohen Seglias was able to marshal a team to work with the client and its IT personnel to collect documents by identifying document custodians and repositories scattered throughout various internal databases, network drives, intranet web space and personal electronic files. Cohen Seglias collected and reviewed the ESI efficiently while minimizing the disturbance to business operations and keeping costs significantly lower than if paper review or a linear document review platform was utilized. Ultimately, Cohen Seglias, through search terms, issue searches and sampling techniques, not only prepared for the fast track arbitration but assisted the client in obtaining a favorable settlement.
- Our client, a large mechanical contractor, had a large claim for extras on a public project. Cohen Seglias informed the client of its need to place a litigation hold on all paper and electronic documents. We met with the client and its IT department, explained the import of a litigation hold and walked them through the process of advising all of their employees how to manage through the hold. Cohen Seglias then led the collection efforts protecting against manipulation of the native documents and metadata. As a result of these in-house conversations and actions, Cohen Seglias was able to defend against allegations that documents had been destroyed.
- One of our general contractor clients had questions with regard to electronic document management on a project-by-project basis. Its project superintendents were keeping project records on personal laptops without server back-up. Cohen Seglias assisted the client in formulating a document retention policy to avoid issues of lack of control and provided in-house seminars to the project superintendents on the importance of following the newly installed policy and systems.
Our Group also helps clients manage and store their information and create litigation readiness plans. We educate our clients on document retention strategies and work closely with their IT departments to create policies and processes that work in today’s rapidly changing environment. Through in-house seminars, we teach our clients and their employees sensible document retention and preservation plans tailored to their organization’s specific needs. We also help our clients revise company handbooks to protect them from liabilities that could arise from the misuse of technology.