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Spotlights

LexisNexis® Applied Discovery® Repository

Spotlight on the LexisNexis® Applied Discovery® Repository
This Spotlight column features an interview with Travis Olson, senior director of product development for Applied Discovery.
 
The Discovery Standard (DS): In mid-September, LexisNexis Applied Discovery made available to its clients its latest product release, version 4.0, featuring a new architecture built around a repository. Can you explain the significance of this repository-centered architecture and how it will benefit clients?

Travis Olson (TO): The new repository represents a tremendous advance in the capabilities of the Applied Discovery system and will bring a number of benefits to our clients, including faster turnaround time, the optimal document review experience for large and disparate legal teams and mechanisms for reuse that will save time and money. The repository release builds on our recent review platform enhancements providing multi-media file support, hit-highlighting and search features to find documents “more like this.”

DS: How does the repository accomplish all these things?

TO: Let’s start with the way the system has been redesigned. The advantages to our clients all flow out of that. First of all, it’s important to understand that the Applied Discovery system consists of a tightly coupled production system and an online review application. The latest release has significant improvements to both parts of the system, which has been rearchitected to accommodate the growing volumes of electronic evidence that today’s – and tomorrow’s – cases comprise.  We also invested heavily in the underlying infrastructure our review platform runs on, increasing the overall scalability of our environment.

The new architecture is built around a single document source from which a variety of views can be pulled. This allows us to produce documents to one database and release them for review to another, thus eliminating most contention concerns. Resource contention – vying for cycles during the different stages of e-discovery services – is an issue in the industry as cases with larger and larger data volumes come in. With the new architecture, however, we can produce a constant flow of processed documents into the system. Reviewers can continue their work uninterrupted as new documents are being uploaded. Document preparation – expansion, processing, filtering and indexing – happens on a high-speed, high-capacity, GRID-enabled system that uses multiple computers working in parallel to leverage their combined computing power at high levels of efficiency. Resources are allocated when and where they are most needed. All of this means improved turnaround times and increased scalability.

DS: This single document source from which clients can derive any number of case views – is this the repository?

TO: Yes. The repository is a master set of all the relevant documents provided by the client. This master set of documents can contain multiple matters; it can be made up of all the documents that the client believes may be involved in litigation. All of these documents are processed, indexed and ready to be released for review as needed. They can be quickly assigned to review teams as a matter arises.

For litigation preparedness, the repository is an extremely useful tool. With all of their litigation documents in one central location, clients can have much better control of their data. They can go to their initial meet and confer confident that they can locate all their relevant information for litigation.

DS: Did you design this new repository-centered system with a particular type of client in mind?

TO: There are a number of different use cases for the repository. But the most common one, and the one for which we have had the most client requests, is the corporate client who has multiple cases – or serial litigation – using the same set of documents. This is the norm in products liability matters and is also true in cases involving the securities, financial services and insurance industries.

Without the repository, clients involved in serial litigation find themselves collecting and processing pretty much the same set of documents over and over again as each new, related matter is filed.

With the repository, clients involved in serial litigation collect and process the document set only once and then set up a new case view for each matter as it arises. Each new case view is available at minimal cost and with rapid turnaround since the documents are all ready to be released for review.

Not only does the repository save the client time and money in this scenario, but it also helps with risk mitigation. Documents that a company knows are potentially relevant to serial litigation can be collected, processed and readied for discovery, giving counsel more confidence about compliance with legal holds.  

DS: In addition to being efficient and cost-effective for multiple related matters, what are the other beneficial scenarios for this kind of repository-centered system?

TO: Because the system is built to accommodate hundreds of concurrent reviewers and can provide a segregated workspace for each group of reviewers, the repository is ideal for a large matter with multiple review teams or multi-party litigation. Even though these teams may be viewing the same set of documents, each team’s work product is its own and private. The teams can work on the same document set without interfering with each other.

Another situation where the repository provides a great deal of value is in cases requiring multiple levels of review. This may occur, for instance, when initial privilege reviews are done with contract attorneys, and an in-house or staff attorney does a second-level review to check on the accuracy of non-disclosure decisions. In these situations, each of the different levels of review has its own view into the document set, with results from the first level populating the second level, results from the second level populating the third and so on. Different access rights can be set up at the different levels, ensuring that only those with the right permissions see the documents and that work product is protected.

Productions of reviewed documents to a third party – to opposing counsel, a government agency, expert witnesses or even for in camera judicial review – is yet another good application for the repository. It is easy to create a secure view into a subset of documents that are in the repository. And those documents will be complete with any redactions or annotations stored in relation to their appropriate cases. Clients can be assured that the view they are providing to external parties is secure and contains only the documents (and versions of documents) they wish to include.

DS: Security, through strict control of access rights, sounds like a main feature of the repository, is that right?

TO: Having the ability to create multiple secure views of a master set of documents is definitely a key feature. And there are other layers of security surrounding the repository. We’re running a hosted environment with advanced intrusion detection systems, redundant managed firewalls and 128-bit SSL encryption with digital certificates. Security is a huge focus for us because we’re dealing with sensitive client data. We have passed very demanding security audits from some large financial institutions, and we’re continually improving our security posture to meet the changing threat environment.

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