Case Studies

We work with our clients to solve complex data problems, address compliance and privacy challenges, and achieve better legal outcomes. Read the case studies.

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July 3, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, Corporate, Corporation, eDiscovery, fact-finding, document-review, investigations, KDI, key-document-identification, keyword-search, tech-industry, analytics, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics

Beyond Relevance: Finding Evidence in a Fraction of the Time

Lighthouse goes beyond linear review to help a global technology company make its case to the IRS. Key Actions Targeting critical case documents with Key Document Identification rather than performing linear review on the whole document set. Identifying key events that took place within specific hours, by applying advanced linguistic modelling to overcome challenges presented by multiple time zones and different time stamp formats within email traffic. Key Results 1.5 million total documents reduced to roughly 37,500. Results in 100-500% less time and at 90-240% lower cost than linear review. Building a Case for Tax-Exempt Lunches A global technology company was facing IRS scrutiny over the complementary lunches the company provided to staff. Full-time workers were comped the meals because, the company claimed, staff were required to respond to emergencies during lunch hours. The IRS was dubious of that claim and inclined to consider the lunches a taxable benefit. To prevent the meals from being taxed, the company needed to demonstrate to the IRS that, over a two-year period, at least 50% of employees at its San Francisco office had in fact responded to an emergency between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time. For evidence, the company had 1.5 million documents—mostly emails—pertaining to about 1,000 employees. The company reached out to Lighthouse for help finding the best case-building documents within those 1.5 million. Lighthouse offered its Key Document Identification service. Rather than prioritize documents for linear review, the Lighthouse team promised to identify the most valuable and evidential documents—and do so in less time and at a lower cost. Hacking Through the Haystack The Lighthouse team eliminated less-valuable documents in stages. First, they used an advanced algorithm to remove junk and duplicative documents, reducing the document set to 943,000 (a 38% reduction). Among those, the team targeted San Francisco employee names and emails, which brought the total down to 484,000 (an additional 49% reduction). From here, the team employed nuanced, multi-layered linguistic search techniques to zero in on the most necessary and informative documents. Along the way, Lighthouse encountered a number of challenges that would have thwarted other search tools and teams. One of these was the knot of different time stamps attached to emails: the last in time email in every thread was converted to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), while every previous email in the thread was stamped according to the local time zone of the sender. The Lighthouse team circumvented this by searching the emails’ metadata, which converted all times to UTC. Using this metadata, the team was able to search using a single timeframe (6 to 9 p.m. UTC, corresponding with 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific). Another challenge was looping together all emails stemming from the same incident, so that Lighthouse could provide the company with a complete account of each emergency response (and avoid counting a given emergency more than once). The team did this by flagging one email tied to a specific emergency and using proprietary threading technology to propagate that flagging to all other emails associated with that emergency. Finally, the Lighthouse team had to classify documents by level of emergency, to help the company build the strongest case. The emergency level of some documents was already classified, thanks to a system installed by the company toward the end of the two years under investigation. But for the majority of documents, it was unknown. Lighthouse was able to classify them using advanced search features of proprietary technology, which identified key terms like “time-sensitive” and other ways emergencies were referenced in the document population. Major Savings and Critical Insights In only two weeks, a two-person team delivered on Lighthouse’s promise to help the company gather evidence, shrink the document population, and save time and money. Had the company tried to build a case with linear review instead, it would have taken up to 5 times longer and cost up to twice as much. Of the 1.5 million total documents, Lighthouse escalated approximately 37,500 (2.5% of the original dataset). To help with case building, the team sorted documents into three tiers of descending priority: employees responding to high-level emergencies during the lunch hour, employees responding to any level of emergency during the lunch hour, and employees responding to high-level emergencies at any time in the day. The Lighthouse team also normalized the metadata for all documents to make it easy for company counsel to see which employees were involved in each document and thread. Across the three tiers: 78% of San Francisco employees were tied to at least one document 74% were tied to at least one non-propagated document (i.e., an email associated with a unique emergency) 68% were the sender of at least one non-propagated document This strongly suggested that more than 50% of employees actively responded to emergencies in the target timeframe and helped counsel hit the ground running in collecting the facts to prove it. Corporate Case Studycase-study; corporate; corporation; ediscovery; fact-finding; document-review; investigations; kdi; key-document-identification; keyword-search; tech-industry; analyticsediscovery-review; ai-and-analytics; client-successCase-Study, Corporate, Corporation, eDiscovery, fact-finding, document-review, investigations, KDI, key-document-identification, keyword-search, tech-industry, analytics, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics
July 1, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, AI, ai-and-analytics, analytics, artificial-intelligence, Big-Data, Corporation, Corporate, data-analytics, Data-Re-use, Data-Reuse, data-re-use, document-review, eDiscovery, litigation, Prism, PII, PHI, Healthcare, healthcare-litigation, PII, PHI, HIPAA-PHI, managed-review, document-review, review, TAR-Predictive-Coding, technology-assisted-review, TAR, Production, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics

Simplifying Complex Multi-District Document Review

A large healthcare provider faced a series of related matters requiring document review. Lighthouse designed and executed a single review workflow that provided accurate, consistent, and efficient productions. Lighthouse Managed Review Results Efficient, compliant productions across 14 matters in 9 states (and counting) Nuanced document review performed by one experienced review team, eliminating the need to train multiple review teams Case teams avoided re-reviewing 150K core documents by reusing 100K high-quality review decisions and redactions A Perfect Storm of Review Complexities A large healthcare provider was facing 14 related matters across 9 states. The initial corpus of documents numbered 11M, with each jurisdiction adding more. While each matter shared a core set of relevant issues, they all had their own unique relevancy scope and were being handled by different outside counsel and eDiscovery teams. The corpus was also littered with personally identifiable information (PII) that required identification and redaction by review teams before production. Combining Expertise and Tech to Drive Efficiency The company turned to Lighthouse because of our extensive experience working on complex document review. Our review managers developed a sophisticated workflow to reduce the number of documents requiring review and re-review across jurisdictions by leveraging advanced technology. Custom Workflow Enables Work Product Reuse To lower costs and maximize consistency across matters, Lighthouse created an overall document repository and review database, as well as separate jurisdictional databases. The team migrated all 11M documents into the document repository and used advanced AI and review technology to isolate a core set of documents that were most likely to be responsive across all jurisdictions. Our review managers efficiently worked with all outside counsel teams to validate this core set. They also suggested and implemented a coding layout for each jurisdiction to facilitate work product reuse and consistency across matters. One Skilled Review Team and Review Process for All Matters Our combination of managed review, advanced technology, and custom data re-use workflow resulted in a single document set that met all jurisdiction-specific production requirements. These documents were duplicated across all databases for immediate production in multiple matters. To get to this caliber of review, our review managers used technology to reduce the number of documents needing eyes-on review to 90K and trained an experienced review team on both universal and jurisdictional responsiveness. Technology was also used to expedite PII redaction and propagate coding to the core set of 150K documents. Unprecedented Review Time and Cost Savings With Lighthouse’s review approach, each case team had more freedom in how they structured their post-production workflows. Our approach also provided stricter control of data and enabled more accurate and predictable billing for the client. Further, all 14 matters now had an initial production ready at the push of a button. In addition to lowering costs, this gave local counsel additional time to assess case strategy, with the first production available in advance of agreed-upon deadlines. Instantaneous Initial Production for Multiple Matters Beyond the stellar review outcomes achieved across each matter, Lighthouse’s strategic workflow and use of technology also saved the client an impressive $650K—a delightful surprise to the client, who was prepared to pay more for such a complex litigation series. As new related matters arise, the client can engage a trained and experienced review team ready to hit the ground running. Corporate Case Studycase-study; ai; ai-and-analytics; analytics; artificial-intelligence; big-data; corporation; corporate; data-analytics; data-re-use; data-reuse; document-review; ediscovery; litigation; prism; pii; phi; healthcare; healthcare-litigation; hipaa-phi; managed-review; review; tar-predictive-coding; technology-assisted-review; tar; productionediscovery-review; ai-and-analytics; client-successCase-Study, client-success, AI, ai-and-analytics, analytics, artificial-intelligence, Big-Data, Corporation, Corporate, data-analytics, Data-Re-use, Data-Reuse, data-re-use, document-review, eDiscovery, litigation, Prism, PII, PHI, Healthcare, healthcare-litigation, PII, PHI, HIPAA-PHI, managed-review, document-review, review, TAR-Predictive-Coding, technology-assisted-review, TAR, Production, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics
June 1, 2023
Case Study
Big-Data, Case-Study, Cloud-Migration, cloud, Cloud-Services, Cloud-Security, Corporate, Corporation, Data-Privacy, Emerging-Data-Sources, Information-Governance, eDiscovery, microsoft, manufacturing-industry, risk-management, chat-and-collaboration-data, ediscovery-review, microsoft-365, data-privacy, information-governance

Engineering a Customized M365 eDiscovery Premium Add-on

Lighthouse bridges internal gaps during technology overhaul and solves longstanding compliance issues for a German multinational healthcare manufacturer. Key Actions Lighthouse engaged company stakeholders in operational planning and received funding from Microsoft to devise and integrate a premium Microsoft 365 (M365) add-on to existing Purview Premium eDiscovery, which resolved an outstanding compliance need. Key Results The proof-of-concept achieved a zero-trust security model integrated with third-party software, and satisfied the barring of critical needs for the Company that centralized IT and legal departments after years of dysfunction. What They Needed Automating a transition to M365 commonly yields a clash between IT, legal, and compliance stakeholders if the decision to convert was spearheaded by IT and made without consulting legal and compliance teams. Typically, during planning or implementation of converting to M365, legal teams ask IT how the new platform will manage compliant and defensible processes, and if IT doesn’t have the answers, the project stalls. This was the situation facing a multinational manufacturing Company that engaged Lighthouse for help during the spring of 2020. At that time, the Company was several years into its M365 transition, and the legal teams’ requirements for adoption of native M365 compliance tools barred a complete transition. Pressure to adopt the tools escalated as M365 workloads for content creation, collaboration, and communication were already rolled out, creating an increasingly large and complex volume of data with significant degrees of risk. Lighthouse Responds to Need and Launches New Technology In partnership with Microsoft Consulting Services, Lighthouse organized a companywide M365 “reset,” hosting a three-day workshop to revamp the transition process and generate an official statement of work. The strategic goal was to streamline the stakeholders from litigation, technical infrastructure, cybersecurity, and forensics teams that previously failed to align. The workshop fielded critical topics geared to encourage constructive discussions between stakeholders and to strengthen departmental trust. The outcome of these discussions eventually enabled the company to move forward with critical compliance updates, including the collection and parsing of Microsoft Teams data, and the management of myriad files and email attachments. Lighthouse took stock of the current state, testing potential solutions, and arrived at a proof-of-concept for an eDiscovery Automation Solution (EAS) that augmented existing M365 capabilities to meet the legal team’s security requirements and remediate any performance gaps. Microsoft recognized the potential value of the EAS for the wider market, ultimately leading to Microsoft funding for the proof-of-concept. Inside the eDiscovery Automation Solution (EAS) Technology Azure-native web application designed to orchestrate the eDiscovery operations of an M365 subscriber through Purview Premium eDiscovery automation Maximized Microsoft Graph API “/Compliance/eDiscovery/” functions and other Microsoft API Simplified to Azure AD trust boundary, targeting the M365 tenant hosted within, and enabling full governance of identity and entitlement throughout Azure and M365 security features Benefits Achieved a zero-trust security model Authorized high-velocity, high-volume eDiscovery tasks without outside technology through automation and orchestration of existing M365 eDiscovery premium capabilities native to M365 Mobilized integration with third-party software included in the Company’s eDiscovery workflows Amplified workload visibility by automatically surfacing relevant Mailboxes, OneDrives, and other M365 group-based technologies dependent upon selected Custodians’ access Corporate Case Studybig-data; case-study; cloud-migration; cloud; cloud-services; cloud-security; corporate; corporation; data-privacy; emerging-data-sources; information-governance; ediscovery; microsoft; manufacturing-industry; risk-managementchat-and-collaboration-data; ediscovery-review; microsoft-365; data-privacy; information-governance; client-success; lighting-the-path-to-better-information-governanceBig-Data, Case-Study, Cloud-Migration, cloud, Cloud-Services, Cloud-Security, Corporate, Corporation, Data-Privacy, Emerging-Data-Sources, Information-Governance, eDiscovery, microsoft, manufacturing-industry, risk-management, chat-and-collaboration-data, ediscovery-review, microsoft-365, data-privacy, information-governance
May 15, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, AI, ai-and-analytics, analytics, artificial-intelligence, Big-Data, Corporation, Corporate, data-analytics, Data-Re-use, Data-Reuse, data-re-use, document-review, eDiscovery, litigation, Prism, privilege, privilege-review, PII, PHI, Pharma, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics

Lighthouse AI and Analytics Drive Unprecedented Savings Across Multiple Matters

A global pharmaceutical company leverages Lighthouse's AI-powered analytics to reduce legal spending, increase efficiency, and decrease risk in their matters. Driving Value on Individual Matters The pharmaceutical company first came to Lighthouse for better, faster review for a single matter. Leveraging our unparalleled range of advanced analytics accelerators, our experienced review managers and expert consultants created a custom review workflow that significantly reduced data volume, expedited review, and increased the accuracy of data classification. Individual Matter Review Workflow and Metrics Driving Value Across All Matters Based on the results from the first matter and Lighthouse’s ability to attain even more review efficiency by connecting matters, the company sent additional matters to Lighthouse. Applying advanced AI across the company’s matters resulted in deeper matter insights and upleveled the accuracy of classification models in ways that that would be impossible on one single matter. As each new matter is added, Lighthouse AI identifies data that overlaps with past and concurrent matters. This has two impacts at the outset: 1) significant processing cost savings and unprecedented 2) early insights into new matters. These insights empower counsel to make more strategic, data-backed decisions from the start, leading to extraordinary downstream efficiencies and significantly reduced risk. For example, across five currently connected matters for the company, Lighthouse AI showed that: “Outside Counsel A” email domains were coded privileged over 95% of the time. Emails with a government email domain on the communication were coded privilege 15% of the time. 20K documents of Custodian B were collected and processed across multiple matters, but only 10 documents were ever actually reviewed. Custodian C’s documents were reviewed and produced across multiple matters, with a 0% privilege rate. Lighthouse AI-powered insights and connections supercharge the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency for each subsequent matter. Past attorney work product and metadata are used to reduce the need for eyes-on review and improve the consistency and accuracy of review for responsiveness, privilege, PII, confidentiality, redactions, and more. Driving Value into The Future The efficiency and risk mitigation benefits continue to grow for the pharmaceutical company with each new matter. A true big data technology, the more data Lighthouse advanced analytics ingests, the deeper and more nuanced its decision-making and insights become. Opportunities for data and attorney work product re-use will also grow with each new matter ingested, amplifying the company’s ROI into the future. Corporate Case Studycase-study; ai; ai-and-analytics; analytics; artificial-intelligence; big-data; corporation; corporate; data-analytics; data-re-use; data-reuse; document-review; ediscovery; litigation; prism; privilege; privilege-review; pii; phi; pharmaediscovery-review; ai-and-analytics; client-success; lighting-the-path-to-better-ediscoveryCase-Study, client-success, AI, ai-and-analytics, analytics, artificial-intelligence, Big-Data, Corporation, Corporate, data-analytics, Data-Re-use, Data-Reuse, data-re-use, document-review, eDiscovery, litigation, Prism, privilege, privilege-review, PII, PHI, Pharma, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics
May 15, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, Big-Data, Cloud-Migration, cloud, Cloud-Services, Corporate, Corporation, Emerging-Data-Sources, Information-Governance, eDiscovery, microsoft, Legacy-Data-Remediation, microsoft, risk-management, Record-Management, financial-services-industry, microsoft-365, information-governance

Meeting Compliance Burden for Financial-Sector Giant

Lighthouse helps global British bank resolve critical risks during a major technology overhaul. Key Actions Microsoft referred Company to Lighthouse to address eDiscovery needs within Microsoft 365 (M365) Lighthouse assembled a team whose members had former expertise gained from stakeholder departments that were affected by the unresolved needs Key Results Compliance risks were successfully remediated using native M365 tools The Company used its new platform to avoid the need for add-on services or vendors What They Needed M365 Implementation Yields Data Risk Management As one of the nation’s largest financial institutions, the Company’s move to M365 required exceptional time and care—further complicating compliance requirements for record-keeping, data protection, and regulated conduct, and ultimately placing demands on M365 that created uncertainty of whether the platform could be resolved. The complex compliance requirements fueled an internal audit, revealing several risks related to the Company’s management of unstructured data, including its practices for retention, deletion, preservation, and protection of sensitive information. The Company asked Microsoft for help—and Microsoft referred the Company to Lighthouse. Tight Deadlines, Exceptional Solutions Lighthouse was tasked to explore whether M365’s native information governance (IG) and eDiscovery tools could address the risks identified in the audit. The team launched a series of workshops, interviews, and research tasks to: Educate stakeholders about M365’s native capabilities for records and information management (RIM) and IG Define stakeholders’ needs and current workflows regarding RIM and IG Analyze gaps in the current state Test and propose new workflows using native M365 tools Executives intensely monitored this project, as every identified risk was critical, so the pressure on the teams’ proposed workflows was tremendous—not to mention a tight 12-week timeline. Lighthouse prevailed, fielding a team of experienced peers with the Company stakeholders. Every business group—from records management to IT that were responsible for remediating risks—was paired with a Lighthouse consultant who had previously filled a similar role at a comparable institution. Our experts gained rapid credibility with each stakeholder group, and they ultimately accomplished a unified solution that was acceptable to all parties. Our solution succeeded in remediating all flagged risks using RIM and IG workflows within M365. It required the Company to upgrade its M365 licensing agreement from E3 to E5, but the company agreed that the added cost was more than worth it. In the end, Lighthouse achieved two key wins: 1) demonstrating to the Company that M365 could meet even the most stringent security and compliance needs, and 2) securing a new trusted partnership with the customer that has continued to develop. ‍ Corporate Case Studycase-study; big-data; cloud-migration; cloud; cloud-services; corporate; corporation; emerging-data-sources; information-governance; ediscovery; microsoft; legacy-data-remediation; risk-management; record-management; financial-services-industrymicrosoft-365; information-governance; client-success; lighting-the-path-to-better-information-governanceCase-Study, client-success, Big-Data, Cloud-Migration, cloud, Cloud-Services, Corporate, Corporation, Emerging-Data-Sources, Information-Governance, eDiscovery, microsoft, Legacy-Data-Remediation, microsoft, risk-management, Record-Management, financial-services-industry, microsoft-365, information-governance
May 1, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, document-review, eDiscovery, fact-finding, KDI, key-document-identification, Law-Firm, ai-and-analytics, analytics, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics

Law Firm Reconstructs Contract History from 92,000 Documents in Three Weeks

Lighthouse applies language models and human expertise to uncover critical evidence. What We Did Outside counsel for a large construction firm partnered with Lighthouse to identify key documents Lighthouse used its proven iterative process to reduce the review set Collaborative approach continuously incorporated counsel’s insights into model results Key Results 92,000 documents reduced to 871 Key handwritten reports identified using metadata Counsel freed to focus on most important documents Review completed within the 3-week deadline Piecing Together Contract History Without a Guide A large construction company facing a breach-of-contract suit retained outside counsel. Because personnel involved in the contract were no longer employed by the contractor, the law firm needed to reconstruct the agreement’s history based on related documents and communications. However, with just three weeks for review, a keyword search returned more than 90,000 items. The firm needed a way to identify the most critical documents rapidly and accurately. Iterating and Adapting to Unearth Critical Information The Lighthouse team applied advanced technology and review expertise to get the job done. Counsel provided Lighthouse with 15 topics relevant to contractual changes, such as cost, delays, and weather conditions. The team identified an initial set of documents using linguistic modeling. The law firm provided feedback to update the search models. The insights of the experienced attorneys directed the investigation, while Lighthouse people and technology accelerated the discovery of relevant information. As new topic areas emerged, Lighthouse adapted. They identified additional contractors involved in the dispute and concerns such as employee discontent and time-keeping accuracy. As the search proceeded, they captured important documents even though they were outside the original search parameters. Most importantly, Lighthouse used metadata to highlight relevant site incident reports, the contents of which were not searchable. The law firm could review salient reports in depth, discovering key information concerning the disputed contract. Ensuring Response Readiness Over four iterations, Lighthouse escalated 871 key documents related to 16 case themes, in addition to the handwritten incident reports. Lighthouse data retrieval experts highlighted key language in Relativity and coded and prioritized critical documents to expedite review. Using a powerful combination of linguistic models and case experience, Lighthouse shrank the unwieldy dataset to a manageable size and brought the most critical information to the forefront. Counsel could focus their resources on the most relevant data and maximize value for their client. By the end of the third week and final delivery, the attorneys were well-prepared for negotiations and litigation. Law Firm Case Studycase-study; document-review; ediscovery; fact-finding; kdi; key-document-identification; law-firm; ai-and-analytics; analyticsediscovery-review; ai-and-analytics; client-success; lighting-the-path-to-better-ediscoveryCase-Study, client-success, document-review, eDiscovery, fact-finding, KDI, key-document-identification, Law-Firm, ai-and-analytics, analytics, ediscovery-review, ai-and-analytics
April 14, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, Corporate, Corporation, -G-Suite, digital forensics, investigations, collections, fraud-detection, Red-Flag-Reporting, Departing-Onboarding-Employee, digital forensics

Lighthouse Finds the Hidden Forensic Evidence Other Teams Miss

Lighthouse's forensics experts found hidden clues missed during an internal investigation, proving a departing employee was stealing company data. Lighthouse Key Results By quickly engaging Lighthouse forensics experts: The company stopped proprietary and sensitive information from being disseminated and used by competitors. The company’s law firm was able to quickly take action against the employee, preventing any further malfeasance or damage. Investigation Overview Week 1 Day 1 – 4 — Employee uploads company data onto a personal Google Drive account over the span of four days. ‍ Day 4 – 5 — An internal investigation concludes that all company data has been deleted from the employee’s personal data sources and no further action is needed. However, the company’s outside counsel calls in Lighthouse forensics experts to perform a separate investigation for affirmation. ‍ Day 6 — Lighthouse forensics experts find evidence missed during the company’s internal investigation, indicating that the laptop provided to internal investigators was a “decoy,” and that the employee had actually transferred the proprietary company data onto an as-of-yet undisclosed laptop. Week 2–4 Outside counsel uses Lighthouse’s findings to file a restraining order against the employee and elicit a confession wherein the employee admitted they had downloaded the proprietary data onto a secret laptop—owned by another business. Week 6 Lighthouse forensics team is provided access to the additional laptop and the employee’s private Google Drive account. Although there is no company data stored on the drive, the Lighthouse team dives deeper and immediately finds that the employee had restored the previously deleted company data back to their Google Drive account, transferred it the secret laptop, and then deleted it again from the Google Drive account. These findings enable outside counsel to take additional remediating actions. Suspicious Activity by a Departing Employee Raises Alarm Bells During routine internal departing employee analysis, a global company was alerted to the fact that an employee had uploaded more than 10K files containing sensitive proprietary data to a personal Google Drive account. The company immediately launched an internal investigation and engaged their outside counsel. Over the course of the internal investigation, the employee admitted they had uploaded company data to their Google Drive, and then used an external hard drive to transfer that data onto a personal laptop. However, the employee avowed that all company data had since been deleted—which the company’s IT team confirmed by examining all three data sources. However, due to the sensitivity of the data, outside counsel wanted additional reassurance that the employee was no longer concealing proprietary company data. The law firm had previously relied on Lighthouse forensics experts for similar investigations and knew that they could count on Lighthouse expertise to find any hidden clues that would point to additional hidden data. Finding the Forensic Breadcrumbs Week 1 The Lighthouse forensics team received access to forensic images of the employee’s personal laptop and external hard drive within one week of the first suspicious upload. The team immediately noticed that the employee’s data tracks conflicted with the timelines and statements provided by the employee during the company’s internal investigation. Key Evidence Found by Lighthouse Forensics Experts The external hard drive used to transfer company data had not been plugged in to the personal laptop during the relevant time frame. File paths identified on the external hard drive (which show the file locations where data was downloaded upon connection) did not match those on the personal laptop provided to internal investigators. This evidence led the Lighthouse team to conclude that the laptop provided by the employee was not the laptop used to download company data—and that a different laptop with the stored proprietary company data existed but had not been disclosed by the employee. Week 2–4 A Lighthouse forensics expert provided a sworn declaration explaining the evidence found during the examination of the employee’s personal devices. The company’s law firm used this declaration to file a restraining order to stop the employee from continuing to steal or disseminate proprietary data. The law firm also used Lighthouse’s findings to elicit a confession from the employee, admitting that they had been secretly working part-time for another business, and had transferred the company’s proprietary data onto a laptop provided to the employee by that business. Week 6 Within two weeks of the Lighthouse forensics expert’s sworn declaration, the Lighthouse team was provided access to the laptop owned by the other business, as well as the employee’s personal Google Drive account. Lighthouse’s inspection of the Google Drive did show that all company data had been deleted, as had been confirmed by internal investigators. However, Lighthouse immediately went deeper into the Google Drive and found conclusive evidence that the employee had subsequently “restored” the deleted proprietary data just a few days after the internal investigation ended, in an attempt to continue with the data theft. Key Evidence Found by Lighthouse Forensics Experts Despite the fact that no company data was stored on the employee’s personal Google Drive account at the time Lighthouse received access to it, Lighthouse forensics experts went above and beyond to do a deeper forensic dive into the user activity log, email account, and internet searches stored on the Google Drive. That deeper analysis showed that: Two days after the internal investigation ended, the employee began conducting numerous internet searches for ways to “restore” deleted files on Google Drive. Two weeks later, the employee emailed a private IT company asking for help restoring deleted Google Drive files. One day after sending that email, thousands of files were restored to the employee’s Google Drive. Those restored files were once again deleted a few days later. Before the restored files were re-deleted, the employee downloaded some of the files containing company data to the “secret” laptop owned by another business. Keeping a Lid on Pandora’s Box The evidence found by Lighthouse forensics experts after their initial examination of the employee’s personal devices enabled the company’s law firm to take legal action against the employee less than one month after the first suspicious data upload. Within one day of being provided access to the employee’s personal Google Drive account, Lighthouse forensics experts were able to find exactly how and where the stolen proprietary and sensitive data was hidden. This enabled the company to permanently prevent any dissemination of that proprietary and sensitive data to competitors. ‍ ‍ Corporate Case Studycase-study; corporate; corporation; g-suite; forensics; investigations; collections; fraud-detection; red-flag-reporting; departing-onboarding-employeedigital forensics; client-successCase-Study, client-success, Corporate, Corporation, -G-Suite, digital forensics, investigations, collections, fraud-detection, Red-Flag-Reporting, Departing-Onboarding-Employee, digital forensics
April 1, 2023
Case Study
Case-Study, client-success, Antitrust, eDiscovery, TAR, TAR-Predictive-Coding, Law-Firm, HSR-Second-Requests, investigations, Mergers, ai-and-analytics, AI-Big-Data, artificial-intelligence, AI, Acquisitions, analytics, predictive-coding, Prism, privilege, privilege-review, tech-industry, ediscovery-review, antitrust, ai-and-analytics

Saving Millions in a Demanding HSR Second Request

Cleary Gottlieb and Lighthouse save millions of dollars and thousands of hours in HSRs Second Request for Fortune 500 company. What They Needed A global Fortune 500 electronics company received an HSR Second Request from the Department of Justice (DOJ), with an extremely aggressive timeline to reach substantial compliance. They engaged Cleary Gottlieb (“Cleary”), a global technology-savvy and innovative law firm with extensive experience handling challenging Second Requests. After Cleary led negotiations with the DOJ to reduce the scope of the investigation, the client was faced with 3.3M documents to review—a significant subset of which included CJK language documents that would require expensive and time-consuming translation. To further complicate matters, the DOJ and Cleary remained engaged in ongoing scope negotiations, resulting in additional data being added throughout the project. Cleary knew that conventional TAR technology was not capable of evaluating a dataset with ever-changing review parameters. How Cleary and Lighthouse Did It CJ Mahoney, counsel and head of the eDiscovery and litigation technology group at Cleary, has extensive experience working on complex HSR Second Requests and has pioneered a number of different analytics-driven methods to reach substantial compliance in the past. Based on prior joint success in innovating new ways to use this technology to improve privilege analytics, CJ immediately saw the potential of Lighthouse’s proprietary AI technology for this challenge. Together, CJ and the Lighthouse data scientists developed a unique training workflow to achieve highly precise responsive prediction results on this challenging dataset. CJ secured the DOJ’s first-ever approval of this workflow with Lighthouse’s proprietary AI technology. Immediately after approval, responsive and privilege analysis and review began simultaneously, enabled by AI technology. For responsiveness, the teams utilized an active learning TAR workflow wherein subject matter experts reviewed a control set of randomly selected documents. After only a few training rounds, the system reached stability and began scoring the remaining dataset for responsiveness. A privilege classifier was built based on 20K previously confirmed privilege calls and applied to score all documents in the privilege workspace. The teams used a combination of the analytic results and privilege terms to identify potential privileged documents. All documents within this set that were scored as “highly likely to be privileged” were immediately routed to reviewers for review and privilege logging. Conversely, documents scored as “unlikely to be privileged” were removed from privilege review after Cleary’s attorneys verified the accuracy of the results using a random sample. Further, the teams used the privilege classifier to identify additional privilege documents that had not hit on privilege terms. As the timeline for substantial compliance approached, negotiations with DOJ regarding relevant timeframes and custodians continued, resulting in the near-constant addition and removal of documents from the dataset. The Lighthouse and Cleary teams managed the ever-changing dataset with ease using the Lighthouse technology and workflow developed by the teams. The Results Using a specialized TAR workflow leveraging advanced AI, the teams delivered highly accurate responsive classification, resulting in more than 500K (or more than 40%) fewer documents requiring further review and production to the DOJ, when compared to legacy TAR tools. By creating a smaller volume of documents requiring production, the amount of privilege and foreign language review was also lessened. For example, 120K fewer foreign language documents were included in the final responsive set compared to legacy TAR tool results. This reduction of review and translation saved approximately $1M alone. For the client, the smaller responsive set meant faster production turnaround times, lower overall costs, and risk mitigation through the decreased chance for inadvertent production of non-responsive documents. The Lighthouse and Cleary partnership resulted in the removal of 200K documents from privilege review beyond what could have been possible through conventional methods, leading to cost savings of $1.2M and time savings of 8K review hours. The team further mitigated risk to the client by identifying privilege documents that did not hit on standard privilege terms. The Cleary and Lighthouse partnership resulted in substantial compliance with the HSR Second Request, increased risk mitigation, faster document review, and remarkable savings for the client. 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