Expert advisors operating at the intersection of technology and litigation
Dechert’s strategic eDiscovery team operates from a foundation of over 30 combined years of experience in the eDiscovery arena, including acting as lead strategic counsel in some of the largest civil litigation matters and criminal investigations in the United States and around the world. Our eDiscovery work for clients is now increasingly global, and we currently advise and support multiple matters in the U.S., EU and Asia.
We advise on and help manage the entire spectrum of discovery and disclosure issues in civil litigations and criminal investigations. Our experience and expertise in a broad range of cutting edge issues — early case assessment (ECA), remote collections, cloud collections, multijurisdictional data transfers, multi-firm review platforms, and technology assisted review (TAR) — allows us to identify and design solutions to our clients’ immediate eDiscovery challenges while also impacting and improving our clients’ overall data governance practices and procedures.
Credibility and an appropriate level of cooperation are essential to any defensible and effective eDiscovery strategy. This critical need is one of our team’s core strengths which has been honed over the years by successful negotiations with opposing or government counsel on hundreds of eDiscovery issues, countless arguments on discovery issues in federal and state court, preparing and defending depositions of IT personnel, and delivering key presentations to criminal prosecutors, government regulators, special masters and senior client management.
Innovation and client-focused solutions
Because we are agnostic when it comes to document review platforms and are free from the fixed costs associated with supporting a law firm document review center, we are able to focus on and develop innovative solutions aligned with our clients’ business and litigation objectives.
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- Takata Corporation in the largest automotive recall in U.S. history, including direct negotiations with U. S. regulators and dozens of court appearances and arguments in federal and state courts. We created and executed a document review strategy and structure that resulted in universal document production sets being provided to Congress, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), state attorney generals, and civil parties from 2014 to 2016, with no sanction motions filed or adverse discovery rulings against our client.
- A global 500 corporation facing a coordinated multi-jurisdictional fraud investigation, separate criminal investigations in multiple countries, and related arbitrations.
- Responding to subpoenas and Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) from multiple branches of the DOJ, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and state attorneys general, including some of largest Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (HSR) requests in the past five years where certifying completion was critical to our clients’ transactional objectives.
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Digital data is now a critical asset of global businesses. Digital data has evolved from merely supporting to now developing and driving businesses. How companies create, store, protect, manage, analyze, aggregate, monetize and dispose of data in an increasingly insecure cyber and mobile world can present significant opportunities and risks for companies. Mistakes in these areas can have a material impact on a company’s finances and reputation.
While laws regulating and protecting data continue to emerge and evolve, they lag far behind transformational technology. Dechert attorneys, who have long practiced at the nexus of law and technology, are uniquely positioned to help clients develop and execute strategic and commercially sensible solutions to today’s data management problems. To assist and guide clients in this area, we work directly with Dechert’s privacy & cybersecurity team to prepare integrated plans or defenses to respond to a broad array of risks.
Our strategic advice is tailored to the challenges our clients face. In some instances, we provide advice on discrete issues such as cloud storage, email archiving or the proper disposition of legacy data. For other clients, particularly those facing a near constant threat of investigations and litigation, we work to ensure that they have an effective and defensible process in place to manage eDiscovery that is fully integrated into their overall data governance policies and procedures. Regardless of our clients’ size and sophistication, our objectives remain the same — risk and cost containment and putting them in a better position to manage eDiscovery or disclosure challenges in the future.
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While we have and can work with a client’s existing eDiscovery vendor, our experience with a wide variety of vendors led us to conclude that clients face real cost and service risks being solely dependent on a single provider. Moreover, law firm document review centers tend to focus on generating revenue not client solutions.
Taking a different approach, Dechert’s Preferred Vendor Program is designed to create and sustain reduced costs to clients while ensuring top-tier client service and support. Following an exhaustive RFP process, we selected two vendors who are guaranteed nothing more than the opportunity to compete for our clients’ work. Through our MSAs with our preferred vendors, we negotiated below market rates and a suite of services provided at no cost, while also maintaining complete control of the staffing of our partner vendor teams, such that we can directly and immediately address service and responsiveness issues. We also actively manage and monitor our vendors (including invoice review) to ensure our clients obtain real value from our preferred relationships.
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Dechert’s eDiscovery Advisory Team (eDAT) provides real-time and just-in-time eDiscovery advisory and support services to Dechert case teams and clients. Building on a solution-not system-based approach, our eDAT team is able to immediately address a wide range of issues from the wording of a legal hold notification to getting a remote document review team up and running in 48 hours. Our team operates on a 24/7 basis and can step in to address, manage and resolve emergencies (real or perceived) in the discovery process. The team has advised on 100+ matters over the past two years across a wide spectrum of litigation and investigation matters, including antitrust, commercial disputes, criminal investigations, IP, international arbitration and mass torts.
