FTI Technology: Running Rings Around e-Discovery

That information is an enterprise asset is well-known. That it may unfortunately be a liability is also true, even though we would like to have that concern go away. Enterprises must know how to deal with the liability side of their information when civil litigation arises. As a result, the e-discovery business has risen among IT vendors that hope to help enterprises manage their litigation/liability issues. FTI Technology, with its Ringtail software, is at the forefront of improving the productivity of the e-discovery process.

FTI Consulting is a services-based organization, with deep specialized expertise in compliance, risk, reputation, liability, performance, finance and information. The company had a recent NYSE-listed market cap of $2.5 billion and is divided into five practice areas, of which FTI Technology (our focus today) is one. To give you some sense of the breadth of FTI Consulting's services and consulting activities, they include corporate finance, economic consulting, forensic and litigation consulting, and strategic communications.

FTI Technology has more than 400 employees who drive annual revenues of roughly $150 million. The company covers a lot of bases, including global electronic discovery, forensic data analysis and litigation support readiness. It's this last area on which we'd like to focus, via the Ringtail litigation support software. However, the important thing to note here is that FTI Technology is not simply a software company that has add-on services and consulting, but rather a company that integrates end-to-end software, services and consulting in a natural blend. This is a competitive differentiator for FTI Technology as it brings together the right mix of human experience and expertise with software horsepower that can be tailor-made for each client engagement.

Ringtail 8 is the latest version of FTI Technology's Review Productivity Tool for e-discovery, but how exactly it is positioned in the e-discovery "life cycle"? The e-discovery life cycle is covered in an industry-accepted framework called the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), which is really a workflow management process. As such, it can be divided roughly into three parts: The left side is information collection, the middle part is information analysis, and the right side is information delivery. There is some overlap of functions and iterations, so the division is not as neat and clean as it seems.

Now, no vendor claims ownership of the very right side of information delivery, called presentation. This is the area in which lawyers actually prepare/make their court presentations, and at least so far this has not been automated. Some vendors claim to have end-to-end solutions that cover all the other ERDM steps, but, frankly, this is very hard to perform with the depth and rigor that is needed for both information collection, which is a lot harder than you think, and analysis, which involves more sophisticated processes and analytics than you would imagine.Ringtail 8 manages the middle (information analysis) and part of the right side (information delivery) of EDRM. Information analysis in ERDM is composed of three closely interrelated steps: processing, review and analysis. The Production functionalities of Ringtail 8 actually assemble/deliver information that attorneys may use in the presentation step.

All the work that Ringtail 8 performs leverages the Ringtail database. This starts with the data that has been delivered by Ringtail from some ERDM information collection tool. While it would be nice if the data transferred was as limited in size as possible--to reduce the time required for processing, review and analysis--that is not as critically important as ensuring that nothing relevant to the case is missing. Better to err on the side of having too much data than not enough.

If relevant data is left behind and that fact becomes known, a number of often serious legal repercussions or penalties can result. So, within reason, having more data than you need is not a severe problem. Hard disks are cheap, and iteratively culling extra data through processing and analytics, as long as the volume isn't unbelievably large, should not be a terrible burden. The key is that what the lawyers eventually have to visually review should be as small and relevant to the case as is possible. That is why FTI emphasizes that the focus of Ringtail 8 is increased review productivity. IT hardware is relatively cheap, especially compared with the cost of the time of legal professionals.

The Ringtail database is designed to contain all the necessary information for a case, providing a foundation upon which reviews can be conducted in a highly productive manner, which is code for getting the precision in the results while keeping costs under control. It does this in a number of ways. Clustering of relevant document collections around key concepts can help intelligently route the most important (or hot) documents to the right reviewers first. The ability to search across both document content and fields in one action, and then highlight key information in multiple colors, can focus reviewer attention quickly and easily, and thus improve productivity. Litigation involving a major e-discovery process can be very expensive.

Early case assessment (ECA) provides one method of estimating the risk in terms of money and time that it will take to prosecute or defend a legal case. And each party (plaintiff or defendant) in civil litigation may very well want to make the apparent cost of the case to the other side as high as possible in order to encourage early settlement on as favorable terms as possible. In fact, it typically is in the interests of both parties to settle early rather than risk higher-than-expected or necessary costs.And so the e-discovery players on the information collection left side of EDRM, who may spill over a little into the more analytical part, often claim that they can do ECA. After all, if their software tools can be used in the process, they can claim to cut down the often substantial overall costs of e-discovery. Of course, the vendors to the right of the information collection process, such as FTI Technology, want to claim that they provide what is really needed for ECA. Who is right?

An attorney friend of mine once told the story of a civil litigation case where the judge raised the question, "Is anyone here on a matter of principle?" A plaintiff raised his hand. The judge turned to him and said, "A law suit is about money, not principle, and who wins what money. That is all." So the money involved is, of course, a major consideration. A second consideration is overall complexity of the case. Now, there may be some outliers and exceptions, but there would seem to be some correlation between the amount of money involved in a case and its complexity.

Simple cases involving little money or complex information may be resolved early on, so ECA could probably be handled by vendors on the left side of the EDRM framework. There may also be some gray areas of cases with moderate complexity and amounts of money where these solutions could be effective. But by that measure, it is apparent that relatively complex cases involving relatively large amounts of money require sophisticated process, review and analysis solutions like FTI Technology's Ringtail 8. Yes, the e-discovery costs go up, but those costs should be only a fraction of the money that could be lost by not being thorough, wasting valuable time or settling prematurely. And this is the space where the big boys play, including FTI Technology.

Who do you call when you need help in managing your e-discovery processes? FTI Technology brings to bear powerful services and consulting expertise for e-discovery processes, as well as the IT infrastructure technology required via its Ringtail 8 solution. Often, e-discovery projects involve almost inconceivable volumes of information. Separating the wheat from the chaff, and then winnowing the information to find the grains that are most meaningful, can be a daunting task. With the latest Ringtail 8 solution, FTI Technology delivers the software horsepower to support and perform the key process, review, analytics and production steps in the EDRM framework.

Enterprises might wish that their information liabilities in the form of civil litigation would never occur, but why waste time on pipe dreams? Those organizations that have to face facts and deal with litigation head on should take comfort in the fact that FTI Technology provides the powerful and effective software, services and consulting to complement and supplement their own internal legal professionals and capabilities.At the time of publication, FTI Technology is not a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group.