Category Archives: ECA

July 25, 2023 · 11:21 AM

Court Decision in Lubrizol vs. IBM Provides Important Guidance on MS Teams Discovery

By John Patzakis

Recently, a federal district court in Ohio issued a ruling concerning an eDiscovery dispute involving both Teams and Slack, Lubrizol Corp. v. IBM Corp., No. 1:21-CV-00870-DAR (N.D. Ohio May 15, 2023). This decision is important as it provides and serves as a template and guidepost on how to collect and produce messages from MS Teams, a challenge which many litigants are struggling with today.

This case involves a breach of contract claim where plaintiff Lubrizol corporation, a major chemical manufacturer, purchased an SAP ERP system, and then hired IBM to implement the enterprise software. The project eventually went off the rails and now the parties are in litigation fighting over eDiscovery.

As you might imagine on an IT project like this, there’s a lot of evidence in Teams and also in Slack. Plaintiff Lubrizol wanted IBM to produce the entire channel of their messages if there was even a single relevant message within the channel. However, in its written opinion, the court determined that the production of an entire Slack or Teams channel, with only a few relevant messages within, would be overbroad per the rules of proportionality. IBM conversely took a counter position that was equally extreme, claiming that they only needed to produce the actual message that the keyword hit on without any context of the broader conversation around it. The court rejected this approach.

Eventually the plaintiff came back to the court with a proposed compromise, which the court agreed with and adopted as its final order as follows:

“IBM to produce: (1) the entirety of any Slack conversation containing 20 or fewer total messages that has at least one responsive message; and (2) the 10 messages preceding or following any responsive Slack message in a Slack channel containing more than 20 total messages. Within 28 days, Lubrizol shall do the same with respect to its Microsoft Teams messages.”

While this ruling is very instructive, many parties struggle with executing such a targeted collection and production effort. The problem with Teams discovery, as outlined in a previous post, is that most eDiscovery tools require parties to collect and export entire Teams channels, with the production format being very problematic due to no efficient ability to provide automated and targeted productions as the court outlines above.

The exception is X1. X1 Enterprise Collect provides, in our opinion, the industry’s best eDiscovery support for MS 365. And many independent eDiscovery, experts, agree. X1’s support for MS Teams is one example. Among the reasons why our MS Teams support stands out, is the ability to produce a specific number of preceding and subsequent messages for automated input into a review platform, all in context. See the screenshot below.

Winston & Strawn eDiscovery partner Bobby Malhotra notes the importance of this capability: “With the vast number of users and unyielding amount of data in collaboration applications such as Teams, having the ability to target and triage data by specific custodians and threads allows organizations to handle discovery in an efficient and pragmatic manner. X1 provides the unique ability to seamlessly collect and search across numerous web, collaboration, and social, data sources.”

X1 recently hosted a webinar demonstrating how to collect from MS Teams in an effective, defensible and proportional manner. You can watch it here on demand.

The X1 Enterprise Collect Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premise, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Case Law, Cloud Data, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, law firm, MS Teams, Preservation & Collection

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July 12, 2023 · 11:47 AM

eDiscovery Journal Highlights X1’s Game Changing Support of MS 365

By John Patzakis

Greg Buckles of the eDJ, arguably the top independent eDiscovery industry analyst, penned an important article outlining X1’s support for MS 365 data sources within the X1 Enterprise Collect platform and how it even surpasses in many respects Microsoft’s own Premium Purview services. In his post, Buckles first listed X1’s “top level take-aways” as follows:

• X1’s Teams support targets individual custodians and specific messaging threads, displacing any need to mass download Teams chats and channels.
o X1 collects and searches Teams content directly without relying on the Microsoft Graph content search API, which has known gaps.
• X1 indexes, searches and processes Teams data in-place, removing any reliance on premium processing or supplemental services.
o Modern attachments are collected and searched in place and automated data formatting enables one-click upload into Relativity for review.
• Unified search and collection of on-premise and cloud data sources, including Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Mail, laptops and file-shares for an optimized workflow
o Provides True ECA and processing capabilities at the point of collection. Assess, process, and collect only what is needed, narrowing funnel at point of collection.

Buckles then notes that “archiving and enterprise search products like Autonomy IDOL struggled to deliver a ‘universal index’ for decades.” Similarly, Microsoft 365 “can struggle to meet the stringent eDiscovery/compliance requirements.” Specifically, Buckles noted that Microsoft Purview faces significant throughput limitations as documented by his own performance testing: “Past Purview advanced indexing performance testing for eDJ corporate clients resulted in limiting SLA’s to 1-3 full custodians per day.” Conversely, Buckles writes that “X1’s distributed index approach allows them to expand a user’s M365 sources to include desktops, file shares and 3rd party content such as Dropbox. It offloads much of the processing overhead to endpoint devices and avoids some of Purview Premium’s throughput limits for larger custodial matters.” As noted in the article, X1’s benchmark testing of 25 mailboxes in 4-8 hours and we have seen that scale in parallel.

Many customers report to us that Microsoft Purview Premium’s documented inability to timely handle anything other than small matters due to their 2GB per hour throughput limit (which X1 is not subject to due to our direct connection approach) is disqualifying for them. eDiscovery and investigation matters need to be addressed expediently. X1 can address a matter involving 100 custodians at 10GB of MS 365 data each within 24 hours (search, collection and export), while Microsoft Purview Premium, per Buckles’ performance testing and Microsoft’s own documentation, would take up to several weeks.

Additionally, Buckles’ generally referenced, including linking to Microsofts’ documentation, identifying other Purview Premium limitations such as not searching files and attachments over 150 MB, not addressing hidden mail folders, and not accessing files and emails without “compliance copies.” X1 is not subject to these limitations.

The X1 Enterprise Collect Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premise, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, MS Teams, OneDrive, Preservation & Collection, SharePoint

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May 16, 2023 · 10:54 AM

X1 Delivers Cutting-Edge MS Teams Support

By John Patzakis

The prominence of Microsoft 365 data sources continue to grow in eDiscovery matters exponentially. However, most non-MS eDiscovery tools collect from MS 365 by simply making bulk copies of data associated with individual accounts, and then attempt to transfer that data en masse to their own proprietary processing and/or review platform. Such an effort is very costly, time-consuming, and inefficient for many reasons. For one, this bulk transfer triggers data transfer throttling by Microsoft, causing significant time delays. But the main problem is that clients who are investing in MS 365 do not want to see all their data routinely exported out of its native environment every time there is an eDiscovery or compliance investigation.

So, enterprises with relevant data stored in MS 365 need to have a good process to perform unified and efficient search and collection of MS 365 and non-MS 365 sources. To achieve requisite efficiency and the minimization of data transfer, this process should be based upon a targeted search and collection in-place capability, and not simply involve mass export of data out of MS 365 for downstream processing and searching.

To answer this unmet critical need, X1 launched MS 365 data connectors to our X1 Enterprise Collect platform. X1 Enterprise Collect provides users the unique ability to search and collect MS 365 data in-place. X1’s optimized approach of iterative search and targeted collection enables organizations to apply proportionality principles across both cloud and on-premise data sources with clear and consistent results for effective eDiscovery.

And now, X1 has added cutting-edge Teams support to complete our existing support of OneDrive, MS Mail and SharePoint. The X1 Enterprise Collect Teams collection capabilities include the following unique benefits unmatched by other independent software providers:
• The ability to target individual custodians and specific messaging threads, displacing any need to mass download channels
• Unified search and collection of on-premise and cloud data sources, including Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Mail, laptops and file-shares for an optimized approach
• Patented index, search and process the data in-place, removes any reliance on premium processing or supplemental services
• One-click upload into Relativity for review, for a streamlined end-to-end process
• A truly automated product solution, as opposed to a service-based offering

Winston & Strawn eDiscovery partner Bobby Malhotra notes: “With the vast number of users and unyielding amount of data in collaboration applications such as Teams, having the ability to target and triage data by specific custodians and threads allows organizations to handle discovery in an efficient and pragmatic manner. X1 provides the unique ability to seamlessly collect and search across numerous web, collaboration, and social, data sources.”

Watch the X1 hosted webinar on-demand featuring the hot topic of Best Practices to Collect from MS Teams in an Effective, Defensible and Proportional Manner.

The X1 Enterprise Collect Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premise, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Authentication, Best Practices, Cloud Data, collection, compliance, Corporations, Data Audit, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, law firm, MS Teams, OneDrive, proportionality, SharePoint

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April 24, 2023 · 3:56 PM

X1 Introduces Cutting-Edge Instagram Support with X1 Social Discovery Version 7

By Larry Gill

Since I joined the X1 team last year as CEO, I have made it my priority to double down on our support and expansion of our X1 Social Discovery solution. To that end, I am excited to announce that we have just launched version 7 of X1 Social Discovery, social media and web collections solution, which includes a new cutting-edge Instagram connector, along with our revamped Facebook support, where all our users now have native post-level collection and parsing to ensure accuracy, key metadata collection, court authentication, and evidentiary completeness of the collected data. Nothing short of those capabilities is acceptable and that is why I can confidently say that X1 Social Discovery is the only solution in the industry capable of delivering all those requirements.

Over the past year, I have spoken to many of our customers and prospects about what they need to support their social media eDiscovery collections and investigations. One thing that became clear: post-level native file collection for social media evidence, including Instagram, is essential.

Other tools simply provide bulk flat file screen shots of social media feeds, and are of very limited value, as they merely provide a screenshot PDF image file without searchable text or metadata, other than what is visible on the image itself. This does not meet the needs of attorneys and paralegals seeking to leverage and admit key social media and website evidence into their cases. For this reason, X1 has put in the work and R&D investment, and, as CEO, I am committed to doing so on an ongoing basis, so that our users would have native post-level collection and parsing as required.

X1 Social Discovery is the only solution to provide native file, post-level Instagram support, and in a manner that is fast and scalable. This enables the following top 5 key benefits for Instagram collections:

  1. Fast and Automated Instagram Feed Capture. X1 Social Discovery v7 captures hundreds of Instagram posts with assorted comments per hour. We have successfully captured several thousand posts in our testing, including individual posts that have hundreds of associated comments and replies. This level of performance is simply impossible with “web plug in” tools.
  2. Post-Level Collection, Filtering and Production. The ability to search, tag, sort, authenticate (with their own hash value), and produce individual Instagram posts with X1 is essential for an efficient and effective workflow. Other tools require “all or nothing” production & hash of the flat PDF output.
  3. Federated Search and Review. With X1, multiple Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and web page collections can now be searched, sorted, and reviewed in a unified manner. No other tools on the market have an integrated review capability.
  4. Robust Post-Level Metadata Capture. X1 Captures over a dozen unique item-level metadata fields for an individual Instagram post. Other tools only record general URLs of the bulk collection, a hash of the entire “all or nothing” bulk PDF export containing up to hundreds of individual posts, with no individual hash values or metadata fields specific to any of those posts.
  5. Deep Integration with Relativity for Review. X1 custom-developed a Relativity .RAP file that enables social media data (now including Instagram) to be displayed natively – at the post-level — in full context in Relativity, the same as it appears in X1 Social Discovery. All metadata is overlayed, and the comments are kept in line and in context. Importantly, each Instagram post collected by X1 is treated as an individual record in Relativity, instead of the bulk export from other tools being a single record. This enables efficient review as well as robust data analytics of social media evidence in Relativity.

To see all these exciting new features in X1 Social Discovery v7, please watch our product tour on-demand. Alternatively, we would welcome the opportunity to brief you and your colleagues directly. Please contact us to speak with a member of the X1 Team.

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Filed under collection, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, Enterprise Search, ESI, Information Governance, Information Management, Legal Ethics & Social Media, Preservation & Collection, Social Media Investigations, Social Media Metadata

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February 28, 2023 · 2:26 PM

A Tectonic Shift is Occurring in eDiscovery

Guest Blog Post by Insight Optix
Original post date by IO: February 23, 2023

Editor’s note: Today we are featuring a guest blog post from legal technology company Insight Optix on the changes occurring in eDiscovery with reference to key survey reports by Doug Austin and Rob Robinson.

Are you tired of hearing about high eDiscovery costs? Legal professionals spend countless hours talking about it, yet year after year the only thing that changes is that costs continue to rise. Will 2023 be any different? We’re seeing a number of indicators pointing to yes.

The eDiscovery software and services market is expected to grow from $14.05 billion in 2022 to $22.31 billion in 2027, according to Rob Robinson’s An eDiscovery Market Size Mashup: 2022-2027 Worldwide Software and Services Overview (complexdiscovery.com). With current economic pressures, it is difficult to see how corporations can continue this trajectory without making significant changes in how they manage eDiscovery.

Corporate legal departments are starting to say enough is enough. While we have recently seen legal departments bringing more work inhouse and moving discovery responsibilities to mid-sized firms or boutique practices, we’re now seeing an even bigger shift — corporate legal departments are actively seeking innovation in the delivery of legal services that drastically reduces discovery spend.

Evidence of this change can be found in eDiscovery Today’s third annual State of the Industry Report Survey published in January. When asked what the top eDiscovery challenge is that not enough people are talking about, the second-highest answer from the 410 respondents was the move to the left of the EDRM and indexing in place, with nearly double the percentage than was received in 2021. As Doug Austin stated in his 5 Legal Tech Predictions for 2023 blog post, “I’m hearing more legal and eDiscovery professionals than ever talk about the importance of information governance, early data assessment (EDA) and targeted collection in discovery.”

Recent technology innovations that focus on identification and collection are shining a spotlight on these critical early stages of the EDRM, finally making it achievable to counteract the high costs of eDiscovery. Insight Optix’s early case strategy and discovery scoping solution, Evidence Optix® and the X1 Enterprise Collect iterative search and targeted collection platform are two examples of innovative solutions that can achieve significant cost reduction.

Corporations that embrace innovation, such as Evidence Optix and X1 Enterprise Collect, are positioning themselves to counteract the rising volume of data and the proliferation of data sources to accomplish what the 2015 amendments to the FRCP intended — right-sized discovery.

While many law firms continue to maintain the status quo, innovative firms who recognize the value of blending early-stage solutions into their case strategies to impact their clients’ bottom line are emerging. These firms are focused on assisting their clients with building better workflows to reduce costs, while also differentiating their services in a highly competitive market.

This past year, many eDiscovery service providers began talking about the early stages of the EDRM and strategically planning a move to the left. This is one of the most telling indicators of the tectonic shift that is changing the landscape of eDiscovery.

How is your company or firm addressing this shift? If you would like to leverage recent technology innovations and get out in front of this important trend, contact us at info@insightoptix.com.

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Filed under Best Practices, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Management