NightOwl Discovery Reduces eDiscovery Document Review by 85%

It’s a well-known axiom in the legal tech world that effective early data assessment on the front end of the eDiscovery process can significantly reduce data that must be processed later in the workflow. But the proof of any theory is always in the empirical results.

NightOwl Discovery, which helps companies in the most demanding industries reach their discovery management goals, recently shared some of the data they’ve been collecting on their efforts to leverage the power of technology to quickly cull data and refine data sets in eDiscovery.

“In decisions on technologies, performance is the primary driver every time,” said Dean Anderson, NightOwl’s director of eDiscovery services.

NightOwl acquired and deployed LexisNexis® Early Data Analyzer, a software application for early data assessment that leaves a smaller footprint on high-performing servers, enabling the firm’s consultants to provide information on data sets to clients as quickly as possible. The results are now in and they are impressive.

“In a case with 90 million records, we’ve reduced our document review corpus by 85 percent using Early Data Analyzer’s document culling workflows,” said Anderson.

Besides the sheer number of documents able to be filtered out with Early Data Analyzer, Anderson cites the amount of internal server space they save as the single greatest advantage the organization has gained. “We’re not needing to store multiple redundant copies of data, which is meaningful,” he said.

LexisNexis® Early Data Analyzer software includes a Web dashboard that allows users to view their case documents on a timeline and then drill in to explore individual documents in the timeframe they choose. The benefit this delivers is a faster snapshot of the data collected in the case and more precise access to specific documents that are likely to be relevant during the review phase of eDiscovery.

At NightOwl, data gets loaded into Early Data Analyzer, which pushes only relevant information LAW® PreDiscovery® – an advanced imaging and eDiscovery software application. Those files are then shared from the LAW directories directly into NightOwl’s review platform, a huge time saver that delivers significant speed to the processing cycle.

“Compared with similar tools, the Early Data Analyzer solution was very flexible and easy to scale,” said Anderson. “We started off with a small EDA footprint, and as we doubled and then tripled our throughput, we were easily able to expand the application to meet our needs.”

To see how NightOwl Discovery leveraged technology tools in order to reduce the volume of data for eDiscovery review by 85 percent, please click here.

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This post is by Daryn Teague, who provides support to the litigation software product line based in the LexisNexis Raleigh Technology Center.