Editor: In your judgment, what are the most important differences between
your services and those of your competitors?
Fehrman: At Electronic Evidence Labs, we specialize in the recovery of
the digital "fingerprints" left by the routine use of computers and other
electronic devices. Even erased files can be recovered and examined, ensuring
that a company has all of the evidence available to it to support its
investigation. We also provide expert tape restoration services and have the
capability to work with hundreds of different tape formats. Only a handful of
providers in the U.S. can handle a case that involves that many different backup
tape formats. At any given time in our labs, we are working on 500 to 1,000
tapes involving terabytes of data.
Another factor that sets us apart is our use of emerging technologies to
perform such functions as data collection and online review to reduce the total
costs of the project. For instance, our proprietary duplicate management
software, OnSite Uploaderª, enables us to reduce the volume of data by as much
as 85 percent prior to processing the data.
Also, a forensics expert must be able to react immediately. We have built a
mobile and incident response team, which can be at any location in the U.S.
within 12 to 18 hours and outside of the U.S. within 24 to 36 hours in response
to a customer's request. With teams presently in 23 countries, we are mobile and
global with the expertise and flexibility to go to the data and correctly
protect it.
We take a consultative approach to working with the litigation team to limit
the scope of data on the front end of a project, which helps to reduce the total
cost of the project. Also, in order to protect the data and integrity of our
clients, we implement high levels of physical and electronic security measures
in our data centers and labs.
Korb: The LawyerLinks Advantage (
href="http://www.lawyerlinks.com/?promoCode=MMC032006"
target=_blank>www.lawyerlinks.com) is a leading edge research tool designed
specifically for corporate advisors that does not require the use of Boolean and
other search structures. Search-based services often yield long lists of results
with unpredictable levels of relevance and detail. LawyerLinks enables corporate
counsel to find answers quickly, study unfamiliar topics and keep up-to-date on
the newest developments. Digesting information by topic keyword, LawyerLinks
results in no false positives.
In the past, legal research tools were designed to be used by specialists,
who did vast amounts of research. Consequently, those tools have been very
complicated to use. In sharp contrast, our product is designed to be used by
lawyers who don't have the time or the patience to do extensive research
themselves. LawyerLinks optimizes corporate law research by indexing information
by topic. It is simple to use because it is organized in a way that lawyers,
particularly in the corporate setting, do their work.
I compare what we're doing for corporate counsel with what Bloomberg has done
for the stock floor traders. Before Bloomberg brought all the information
together on one computer screen, traders had to piece together data from ticker
tapes, faxes, telephones, terminals and a variety of other sources. The
collation performed by Bloomberg for the financial community is what we are
doing for the legal community.
Our team of research editors creates proprietary topic-index pages that
contain one-click navigation to source materials. They then link together and
organize topics into specific subject matter collections.
Editors also format and cross-reference content in the LawyerLinks library of
statutes, rules and official interpretations.
Our topic-index page approach enables advisors to harness the "seamless web"
of legal precedent and practice.
Strack: With over 12 locations nationwide, as well as a European
location and extensive international capabilities, OnSite specializes in complex
and fast moving cases involving multi-terabytes of electronic data. With global
resources to handle any case accurately and efficiently, we're nimble enough to
be activated anytime, anywhere.
In no matter what direction the discovery process takes our clients and their
cases, we have the outstanding staff, proven methodologies and advanced
technology ready to deliver cost effective management of the documents, data and
e-discovery processing. We know that winning a case is not enough. Time, cost,
security, accuracy, and quality are all part of the value proposition demanded
by litigators.
When litigators partner with us, they join a winning family committed to
excellence. We provide the complete solution to all of their discovery related
needs - no excuses, just results!
Our e-discovery services include recovering email from backups, parsing
tiff/pdf conversion, performing redactions, extracting meta and full text data,
searching and reporting data output in any format and other tasks to collect,
search, sort, review and store information so that it can be retrieved quickly
and efficiently where and when it is needed.
While 90 percent of documents created today are created and stored
electronically, the other 10 percent require processing along with documents
historically maintained in paper form. Our paper discovery and litigation
support services include document collection, unitization, scanning, indexing
and coding, OCR/OWR/branding, blowback/ printing, production in image or paper
and format assistance. We also provide black-and-white and color litigation
copying, digital printing, oversized copying, and bindery and labeling services
to round out the full suite of services litigators need in preparing their
cases.
DEALVault, our deal room document review service offering, is available 24x7
with low cost, high speed access. DEALVault is secure and easy to use.
Our web repositories are Internet-based with capabilities for native document
review, tiff image review and concept searching.
Our forensics, data collection and tape restoration services are also
available 24x7 with the capacity to process over seven terabytes of data a day.
We can handle 80 tape formats and more than 200 types of backups. Among other
capabilities, our computer forensics services perform password and deleted file
recoveries.
As well as extensive testifying experience, we offer pre-discovery project
management, e-discovery best practices and other consulting services. Our legal
staffing services include temporary attorneys, forensics engineers and
litigation support staff.
Editor: How do you see your technology and services evolving?
Korb: Soon, we plan to cover several other areas of law that lend
themselves well to topic-based research. For instance, we could add employment
and labor law, or any area that is federally regulated, such as food and drug.
Over time our list will grow, but for now banking, intellectual property and tax
are on the top.
Also, we will continue to provide collaboration tools and personalization
capabilities for customizing the environment. We are very pleased to be making
client/matter ID tracking available in our upcoming release. Another significant
feature will be the capability for the user to return to the last page he viewed
when time has lapsed between research sessions.
Strack: Right now, clients are moving rapidly up the technology curve,
building technology into their practices, and looking for smarter ways to handle
the explosion in the amount of discoverable evidence. We also have been engaged
in the last year on several global assignments.
All over the world, e-discovery has become a challenge and caused a paradigm
shift in litigation as a whole. Multinational companies with subsidiaries in
other countries that are involved in government-led investigations need to
gather electronic data. OnSite is one of only two companies in the world capable
of doing all of the necessary forensics and electronic discovery work on a
global scale.
Coupled with our award winning technology and service oriented approach, our
global capabilities make us the preferred vendor for many of the leading law
firms and corporations in the U.S. and the
world.
Published March 1, 2006.