Technology Resources for Arbitration Practitioners - Document collection, review and production

The use of document review software platforms has become very common in arbitrations involving a large number of documents. This software allows large volumes of data to be uploaded, reviewed, coded and produced from a single platform that can be hosted in a single central location (ie, at a law firm, client or vendor premises) or remotely through a secure connection accessible over the internet. Once the documents are hosted on a software platform, there is potential to reduce the volume of electronic data through early document culling tools, such as deduplication, near duplicate identification and email threading. Documents can be separated into more manageable categories by converting image files through optical character recognition (OCR) into editable and searchable documents, indexing documents, key term identification, concept clustering and foreign language identification. Software programs can also identify media files, transcribe their contents and search within them to help locate key documents.

Some examples of document review platforms are below:

There are myriad software applications that can be used within document review platforms to further assist with all stages of document collection, review and production.

• At the collection stage, for example, specialised software can assist with the collection and review of documents in unstructured data formats (eg, chats, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and Short Message Service (SMS) messages) by grouping the messages into a coherent format that the reviewer can read sequentially.
• Software can help reviewers to visualise data in the documents that would not be easily apparent from a linear review. For example, there is software that allows users to quickly access trends in data types and volumes through a bird’s-eye view of the flow and volume of email, or email timelines. Another example is social network visualisation, which simplifies the document view by consolidating email aliases into a single identifier representing each person. This helps to identify relevant information as well as map the participants in relevant conversations.
• At the production stage, auto-redaction software tools can reduce the time needed for the linear review of documents containing privileged and sensitive information. There are also tools that allow the markup and redaction of voluminous native Excel and image files. Redactions applied in one document can be automatically applied to duplicate content in other documents. There are also software applications that can automatically find and redact sensitive information, such as sensitive words, phrases, social security numbers and credit card numbers.
• Parties may choose to apply some form of technology assisted review (TAR), continuous active learning, and/or predictive coding to categorise and code massive amounts of documents in a potentially shorter period of time. Continuous active learning allows users to train a model to identify responsive documents through the review and modelling of a small initial set of documents. The software then applies the model to the remaining set of documents and provides suggestions for the coding of those documents. As the reviewer conducts a secondary review of the coded documents, the software adapts and changes its coding to match the inputs from the reviewer.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of software developers who make some of the applications discussed above:

• Brainspace: www.brainspace.com
• KLDiscovery: www.kldiscovery.com
• NexLP: www.nexlp.com
• Sentio Software: www.sentiosoft.com
• Veritone: www.veritone.com

There are hundreds of vendors that can assist with the collection and processing of electronic data, host data for large-scale document review, assist with and manage document review, and handle document production.

Many of these vendors use the Relativity software platform and some offer their own document review software platform as well as a number of other platforms from which parties can choose.

The following are a few examples of vendors, which often vary in popularity and experience depending on the region in which they operate:

In addition to the above vendors, many large accounting firms offer data hosting, document collection, and document review services, including but not limited to:

• Ernst & Young
• Deloitte
• KPMG
• PwC

In addition, several consulting firms offer similar services, including but not limited to:

• FTI Consulting
• Navigant
• Control Risks
• Alvarez & Marsal 

Because the list of potential vendors in this area is so large, we have included below a link to a source that lists various document collection providers:

https://complexdiscovery.com/a-running-list-of-top-100-providers/