Doug Austin

Speed and Slack and Specialization and Second Requests: eDiscovery Best Practices

That’s a lot of “S”s!  But, that’s an appropriate description for a recent massive project conducted by HaystackID, which required speed and Slack and specialization to complete a recent Second Request, involving 18 TB of data and completed in just 106 days!

The project, which was described here in Rob Robinson’s excellent ComplexDiscovery site, involved HaystackID’s support of a Department of Justice (DOJ) Second Request based on a proposed acquisition of a highly regulated company. This Second Request resulted in the need to collect and evaluate 18TB of data, including significant stores of Slack messages and files, from both onsite and remote locations from more than 17 types of data stores. Within a period of 106 days, HaystackID completed approximately 300 collections, developed custom tools and processes, including innovative Slack-specific communications heat maps, predictive coding processes, and private message privilege identification, to enable a compliant response of a complex investigation request, ultimately enabling completion of the proposed acquisition.  And it was completed in the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was causing considerable challenges for businesses around the world!

As you can probably tell by the description above, the roadblocks to meeting the accelerated timelines of the DOJ Second Request included: volumes of data, data sources, and Slack discovery challenges.  Regarding Slack, predictive coding can pose unique challenges, especially for messages and files consisting mainly of numeric data, spreadsheets, image files, and short text messages.  Nonetheless, the HaystackID team developed and deployed custom tools and processes to address the challenges, including:

UnitedLex
  • Slack Communications Heat Maps to Allow for the Quick Identification of Message Volume and Pulse Rates Over Time
  • Slack-specific Analytics Process to Address Cluster Concepts from Names of Participants
  • Slack-specific Analytics Process to Address Not Enough Text in Messages
  • Slack-specific Analytics Process to Address Large Control Sets
  • Bifurcating of Slack Public and Private Channels to Support Requested Privilege ReportingAgreements with the FTC

Hence, the idea of “speed and Slack and specialization”!

The case study provides a terrific look into the challenges associated with Second Requests and how they can be addressed and it provides some background “did you knows” as well.  For example, did you know that “Slack” is an acronym?  A lot of people don’t.  It stands for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”!

You can review the case study that discusses speed and Slack and specialization to complete a Second Request at the ComplexD site here.

So, what do you think?  Has your organization ever been involved in a Second Request?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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