First Advantage Litigation Consulting launches forensics and data collection application Discovery Explorer at LegalTech® 2011

…Seamless and integrated suite of end-to-end discovery services to collect, process and review data for matters of any complexity, across any jurisdiction around the world…

NEW YORK – Wednesday 19th January 2011 – First Advantage Litigation Consulting, the global expert in computer forensics and e-discovery for corporations and the legal profession, is launching its new unstructured data preservation and collection application ‘Discovery Explorer’ at the world’s premier legal technology trade show, LegalTech®, which is being held January 31 - February 2, 2011 at The Hilton New York Hotel, New York, NY.

With the capacity to index, preserve, and securely collect from unstructured data volumes of all sizes, First Advantage’s Discovery Explorer will be deployed in the field by its computer forensics experts when providing data collection services for litigation, arbitration and regulatory investigation matters. Combining Discovery Explorer with First Advantage’s existing platforms and services allows legal teams to employ an end-to-end, single-provider solution for the targeted preservation, collection, processing, review, and disclosure of unstructured data for matters of all size and complexity, across any legal jurisdiction.

“The integration of Discovery Explorer with our existing, extensible platforms, TRUE and Global RPM®, allows our clients to aggressively, defensibly, and economically reduce the volume of unstructured data that must be securely collected in the field and then seamlessly deliver that reduced volume of data to our existing platforms for processing, review, and disclosure,” says First Advantage Vice President of Client Development, Adam Pollitt.

Discovery Explorer offers a new and more flexible approach than traditional models for the preservation and collection of unstructured data, which will help First Advantage's clients to reduce costs in an increasingly competitive global market without compromising defensibility or performance at any point in the process.

Pollitt explains, “Preservation and collection of data in the field is a key part of any company’s response to litigation or regulatory investigation.  By and large, existing approaches to this critical phase reflect some form of compromise between the need to collect using a defensible process and the commercial interests of the client in getting the job done in a cost and time efficient manner.  The traditional approach of 'Preserve and Collect Everything' leans towards guaranteeing admissibility and defensibility by using tools which collect more than is strictly necessary, leading to further costs later in the process as this irrelevant data is removed.  The alternative approach termed 'Early Case Assessment', or 'ECA' by some, addresses this over-collection, but its compromises can include: significant costs if these services are charged for on a volume or 'per gigabyte' basis; defensibility challenges if indexing exceptions and irrelevant data are not precisely logged; and limited functionality with respect to downstream requirements for processing, attorney review, and disclosure.”

"Discovery Explorer addresses all of these limitations. Our computer forensics and testifying experts worked in conjunction with our product developers to ensure the defensibility of the processes employed to collect data in the field.  Building the solution in-house gave us the opportunity to seamlessly integrate this defensible and targeted collection process with our fully functional and scalable processing, review and disclosure platform, leading to additional time and cost savings for our clients. Critically, when our computer forensics experts employ Discovery Explorer in the field, they will do so on an hourly consulting basis. Thus, in addition to offering our clients the ability to  defensibly prevent sensitive but irrelevant data from leaving their control, we will also, in particular when very large volumes of data are at issue, be providing them with tremendous cost savings relative to the 'per gigabyte' basis on which 'ECA' products tend to charge," says Pollitt.

Clients involved in multi-jurisdictional matters can also ease the legal burden of collecting and moving information from one country to another with Discovery Explorer, as the new product provides the ability to search, sample results and iteratively refine search criteria such as keywords or date ranges, minimizing the initial volume of unstructured data that needs to be assessed and effectively retrieving only the relevant subset. The avoidance of collection and processing of irrelevant data is a key element of many data protection instruments.

"First Advantage's highly-skilled, global team of experienced computer forensics experts can help ensure that organizations operating internationally fulfill their various disclosure obligations and comply with relevant data protection legislation by minimizing and controlling the nature of the data to be disclosed elsewhere. This is particularly important for legal matters where disclosure obligations in the United States pertain to data in Europe and Asia,” adds Pollitt.

Visitors can meet the First Advantage team at LegalTech® at booth 2107. For further information please visit http://www.fadvlit.com/about-us.html or email [email protected].