Situation: Prepare for and respond to antitrust regulators in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Two consumer retail chains, both with global stores, announced a proposed merger. Given the size of the deal and the companies involved, the legal teams anticipated antitrust investigations from regulators in the United States, Canada and Europe.

The company and its law firm needed an e-discovery partner with a global reach as well as extensive experience working with regulators in the United States, Canada and Europe. Given past work on a previous antitrust investigation, the company and law firm selected FTI Technology as its e-discovery provider.

Solution

Facing large data volumes and tight deadlines, the FTI Technology team leveraged its Second Request expertise to craft an e-discovery solution that would meet the client’s production requirements to regulatory agencies in three countries. This included:

Processing:

More than half of the multi-million document set – comprising a wide range of structured data repositories (proprietary databases, CRM systems) and unstructured data (emails, loose files, legal contracts) – was eliminated through processing and de-duplication, providing the client with immediate cost savings.

Predictive Coding:

Utilizing predictive coding within the Ringtail e-discovery software, the team further reduced the document population by another 50% by eliminating irrelevant materials.

Managed Review:

A team of highly qualified review attorneys, including French-language review attorneys, reviewed the remaining materials for privilege and redactions. This included emails from the cloud, as well data from Salesforce, SharePoint and Google Drive. In addition, the FTI Technology team prepared the privilege log at the direction of counsel.

Productions:

Native files were produced to the European Commission, Canadian Competition Bureau and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in the required production formats and on time.

Deposition and Trial Research:

Using the analytics features within Ringtail, FTI Technology’s legal researchers found hot documents quickly, providing the legal team with extra time to prepare for depositions and trial.

Project Management:

Throughout the entire process, the FTI Technology team provided ongoing updates and transparency into the project, as well as interfaced with the regulatory agencies on technology use and production formats and deadlines.

Impact: Through expert workflows and advanced technology, FTI Technology met all three production deadlines and provided the client with more than $2 million in cost savings.

FTI Technology’s efficiency and expertise in Second Request investigations led to over $2 million dollars in savings for the client. Using advanced technology and innovative workflows, the FTI Technology team dramatically reduced the documents for review. With FTI Technology’s predictive coding and proven workflows, the materials were produced to three government agencies in the United States, Canada and Europe within the deadline.