Resource Center
The client, a large multi-national, faced an FCPA investigation that spanned the globe. Its Am Law 10 firm was required to collect over 3.2 million documents from far-flung locations like Russia, Azerbaijan, Argentina, China, Spain and Italy. Not surprisingly, the investigation had a short fuse. Counsel only had 80 days to search, analyze, translate and review the files.
Challenge: Review 2.2 Million Documents in 80 Days
The legal team organized reviewers while they worked with Catalyst Consulting to search the documents. Like many FCPA actions, this was a case about proving a negative that our client's employees did not bribe foreign officials. To make matters worse, the case required numerous sets of searches to accommodate the many languages.
The team employed sophisticated multi-language search strategies to try and reduce review populations. But despite their best efforts, they only managed to reduce the document population by 35%. That still left over 2 million documents to review and not much time to get it done.
Solution: Predictive Ranking Helps Target FCPA Review
Our consultants suggested the client try "Predictive Ranking," a new technique that combines statistical algorithms and data mining with review sampling. With Predictive Ranking, we start by having senior attorneys review and tag an initial set of documents retrieved from their searches. As the reviewers tag more documents, Catalyst Consultants begin running correlations against the searches that retrieved the documents to determine which searches were more effective.
The process is iterative. As more documents are tagged, the analysis becomes more reliable. By correlating the number and type of original document tags against results, Catalyst was able to assign relevance ranks. That set the stage for Predictive Ranking, identifying documents which were more likely relevant to the investigation and ranking them for priority review.
Catalyst's Predictive Ranking techniques enabled the team to reduce the review population by an additional 35% percent. This cut the final document count to just 750,000, a total reduction of over 2.5 million documents. The team was able to meet its deadline without breaking the client's budget.
The Catalyst Advantage: Premier Multi-Language Repository Backed by Sophisticated Experts from Catalyst Consulting
As document populations increase, clients and counsel are increasingly turning to repository companies who can supplement their technology with analytics and statistical techniques. The Catalyst Consulting team includes certified search experts, senior attorneys and legal technologists backed by renowned statisticians and mathematicians from the academic community. That's one of the many Catalyst advantages.
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