Jones Day has more than a decade of extensive experience litigating discovery of electronically stored information (ESI), with a focus on efficiently managing the process of satisfying our clients' discovery needs. Jones Day attorneys also frequently advise clients on best document management practices and litigation preparedness.
Our Approach
The Firm's e-discovery resources are divided into three groups, which bring complementary perspectives. Our Project Management Team is a dedicated team of attorneys with broad experience managing e-discovery projects, both large and small; our Litigation Support Team is comprised of non-attorney professionals with technical proficiency and experience in discovery and trial; and our E-Discovery Committee includes attorney and non-attorney professionals who actively monitor developments in the law and technology, counsel clients, and participate in thought leadership groups, such as the Sedona Conference. Members of each of our teams bring their unique knowledge and experience in project management, technologies, and e-discovery practices most suited for a particular matter.
The Firm's ultimate goal is to assure that its litigators offer clients sophisticated knowledge of, and support for, e-discovery. We do not segregate e-discovery into a function performed by attorneys handling only e-discovery tasks, who may only understand how to use the technology. Rather, our goal is to arm those litigating the merits, most knowledgeable about the case and its strategy, with the assistance they need to best serve client interests.
Our Deep Involvement in Formulation of E-Discovery Best Practices
Jones Day’s focus on e-discovery began many years before the term became a tag line. Beginning in the 1990s, Jones Day litigators saw the valuable role that technology could play in effectively managing large quantities of documents.
Jones Day has had long involvement with The Sedona Conference Working Groups, as well as DRI and the ABA Committee on Pretrial Practice and Discovery, in addition to various state bar associations. Steve Bennett, Chair of the Firm’s E-Discovery Committee, writes a column on computer law for the New York State Bar Association Journal, and many Jones day lawyers regularly write and speak on e-discovery topics. Our Project Management Team, Litigation Support Team, and E-Discovery Committee also frequently provide internal and external training on e-discovery issues.
Our Clients Demand Flexibility and Creative Solutions - We Deliver
Jones Day litigators recognize that vast storage of ESI has made discovery more costly than ever. The technology and business approaches of our clients, moreover, are diverse and evolving. The Jones Day team is adept at managing these challenges.
Client Resources. We constantly consider strategic approaches to minimize costs and respond to the particular needs of a matter. We work with our clients’ legal and IT resources to minimize costs associated with document preservation and collection. In one recent matter, our client’s IT staff was well acquainted with the steps required to preserve all relevant data and its corresponding metadata during the document collection process. As a result, we limited the involvement of an outside collection vendor to the specific assistance required to meet client needs (i.e., staffing limitations) and the matter (i.e., defensibility of the process). These steps substantially reduced the costs associated with a collection of nearly two million documents from more than thirty document custodians in five geographic locations.
Project Workflow. Jones Day litigators have extensive training and experience in management of challenging e-discovery projects. We understand the issues that may arise at each stage of the process, the need to plan for each task, and the importance of re-evaluating strategies as the project progresses. Working closely with our clients, we customize workflows to meet the client’s specific needs, with an eye always on economy and efficiency.
Multiple Jurisdictions/Languages/Locations. Many of our clients are multi-national corporations with offices and operations across the globe. We leverage the experience of our Privacy & Data Security team and the knowledge of our international offices to address individual requirements and strategic concerns related to various international jurisdictions, including privacy, language, and collection issues. For example, in a case pending in the U.S., approximately four million pages of documents were located in Germany and subject to data protection laws, which required that certain data be redacted before delivery to the U.S. We retained a vendor to host the data in the European Union and used our Munich office to review and redact the data. Collaboratively working with Jones Day attorneys in our international offices allowed us to use in-house resources to minimize the need for costly translation of the documents.
The Firm regularly deals with review of documents written in languages other than English, including Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. For an international client facing allegations of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, we selected a web-based review tool that identified and segregated documents into review batches based on foreign language content, and we reviewed English and Chinese language documents using Jones Day attorneys in our Washington and Shanghai offices.
Counseling Clients & Using Technical Resources to Minimize E-Discovery Costs
Jones Day attorneys routinely work with the Project Management Team and Litigation Support Team to evaluate strategic methods to decrease e-discovery costs.
Client Counseling. We use our scholarly involvement with best practice groups like the Sedona Conference and our extensive litigation experience to counsel clients on various e-discovery issues. We provide training programs, webinars, and responses to particular client requests. We help clients develop appropriate practices and policies for ESI retention, preservation, and collection. Planning for and implementing such practices and policies—and ensuring that in-house counsel and IT staff understand the relevant concerns and processes—allows our clients to address litigation needs effectively when they arise.
Vendor Selection and Pricing. Jones Day litigators are not tied to any specific vendor. Rather, the Project Management Team and Litigation Support Team have developed extensive knowledge of and experience with a variety of vendors and software. As a result, our lawyers can suggest vendors and software with the most effective and efficient technologies that will best satisfy the client’s needs in a particular matter. We constantly monitor developments in new litigation support technologies to provide our clients advice on best solutions.
In addition, vendors understand the magnitude and scope of the work we perform as well as our knowledge of relevant legal and technical considerations. We leverage our position as a major player in the market for e-discovery services to our clients’ advantage when negotiating vendor fees. We often are involved in overseeing client/vendor relationships to ensure that our clients are charged only for work that is necessary and competently executed.
Alternative Review Methodologies. The growing number of e-discovery vendors and technology solutions provide many options for our lawyers to recommend based on the specific needs and resources of a given client. Where our clients must respond to a demand for documents in a short time period, we may recommend use of emerging review technologies, such as concept clustering and predictive coding, to increase review speed and consistency. When the primary goal is a fast and effective internal investigation or audit, we may recommend early case assessment tools, which allow reviewers to locate and analyze key facts quickly. Such tools offer advanced data organization technologies, including email threading, which can allow reviewers to view and assess complete email conversations, and predictive coding, which allows reviewers to identify and bulk code similar documents. Our understanding of how to select and use such alternative review methodologies is an integral component of the value that the Project Management and Litigation Support Teams provide to the Firm’s litigators.