Rather than merely search and cull electronic data that has been requested in the manner of traditional discovery, we are capable of working with you to understand and define your discovery goals in the context of the substantive issues in your case. In executing a discovery plan, we can help you arrive at a sensible, cost-effective method for requesting access to relevant information, including determining the format in which the information should be requested and the sequence of discovery tools most logical (and most defensible) to deploy. In so doing, we will lay the groundwork for providing both technical affidavits and federal and state law-tested rationale in support of your requests, if challenged.
To the extent that your objective may be to resist burdensome discovery requests, we will work with you to either substantiate your showing of undue burden or lack of reasonable access or significantly curtail the scope of the opposing party’s requests. As a part of this process, we will help you gain the necessary understanding of your client’s IT environment in terms of both its physical structure as well as its departmental and intra-departmental culture. Simultaneously, we will assist you in building a database of materials that can be searched and culled for responsive and privileged information in a manner that is most efficient and cost effective under the circumstances. As with all projects, we will take care to make use of whatever specific software and hardware the parties already have on hand unless we truly believe that the introduction of new technology is warranted. Because of our close relationships with other e-data industry experts, we are capable of taking advantage of emerging solutions that will deliver what the manufacturer promises. At the same, because we consciously avoid being married to any particular technology, you can be assured that our recommendations do not come with a built-in agenda.
If permitted, we are fully capable of retrieving all electronic information on site, using the appropriate forensic protocol to protect admissibility of the evidence at trial. At The Cipher Group, LLC, we believe that every data recovery effort should be approached like a crime scene unless circumstances dictate otherwise. The very nature of electronic evidence and the relative novelty of its use in the courtroom dictates that this level of care must be taken. If the opposition is permitted to provide the data, or, if a neutral third party is appointed, we can oversee production to ensure that the appropriate protocol is followed and that production is complete. We will then work with you in analyzing the data produced in order to determine whether any further requests are appropriate or whether your discovery objectives have been achieved. If and when the time comes, we are ready to appear at trial to testify both as technological experts as well as mere custodians in the chain of custody. You will also have fully searchable databases of relevant electronic documents that can be easily plugged into presentation software for use at trial.
In addition to specific litigation projects, The Cipher Group, LLC can provide a review and assessment of the corporate client’s IT department and litigation-response protocol to ensure that the impact of any future litigation is minimized. We will review the client’s IT structure in terms of technology, location and storage/preservation policies. Such a review will take stock of everything from primary servers, to moth-balled legacy hardware, to executive PDAs. We will also investigate the various components of what should be a proper litigation-response plan, including identifying appropriate personnel to form effective channels for the preservation and collection of data from the various data custodians throughout the corporation at large. From here, we will help the client to formalize this process in a way that ensures appropriate supervision and auditable results.