The evolution of investigation and early case assessment

Facing ever-increasing legal, regulatory and resource pressures, corporate counsel and their external legal advisors must stay ahead of the curve to protect and promote their…

Wendy Cole profile picture

Wendy Cole

November 18, 20204 minutes read

Facing ever-increasing legal, regulatory and resource pressures, corporate counsel and their external legal advisors must stay ahead of the curve to protect and promote their organization’s best interests. In an investigation or potential litigation, it is critical that teams, despite a plethora of unstructured data and unknown unknowns, gain rapid access to the critical evidence to accurately assess risks, potential liability, and case strengths.

Legacy approaches

Legacy approaches to conducting investigations or early case assessment (ECA) when confronted with large volumes of electronically stored information (ESI) frequently involve ad hoc manual review of ESI in native format (e.g., email PST stores) or processing and culling data. After roughly culling the data based on limited keyword search terms, legacy approaches often resort to a full production-style review to uncover key facts and evidence. But these approaches can be inefficient, risky and slow.

A new approach

New technology from OpenText™ featuring front-loaded analytic power enables legal teams and investigators to rapidly find the key facts that can inform strategy and optimize decision making — without having to review the entire universe of ESI from the start.

OpenText™ Axcelerate™ Investigation is an integrated flexible platform designed to enable organizations to take a quick deep dive into the data, explore communication patterns, and uncover concepts and hidden information that might otherwise be overlooked or discovered too late — while leveraging traditional ECA functionality such as data collection, de-NISTing and deduplication. Whether deployed on premise or accessed OnDemand in the cloud, teams can go straight from data collection to processing, culling and deep analysis with accuracy, efficiency, and speed.

The power of Axcelerate Investigation analytics

Powerful analytics drive efficiency and intelligent data-driven decisions. With Axcelerate Investigation, whether deployed on premise or OnDemand in the cloud, Legal and investigation teams can:

  • Visually identify communication patterns amongst previously known and unknown witnesses and identify any gaps or anomalies to ensure that they can comprehensively identify, preserve and collect (via extensive turn-key connectors) all potentially relevant data as early as possible;
  • Significantly lower the risk of overlooking critical evidence not caught by keyword searches, which can be ineffective when there are many unknown unknowns;
  • Intelligently zero in on the critical evidence even within very large datasets by using tools such as intuitive smart filters and concept analysis to group documents based on contextual meaning;
  • Accurately locate similar documents with predictive search “find more like this” functionality;
  • Narrow results and discover terms they may have missed using phrase analysis;
  • Uncover important hidden patterns, facts, and evidence by automatically identifying people, places, organizations and even sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) within the data; and,
  • Surface analytic information in an intuitive and adaptable visual dashboard, making the vast wealth of analytic data accessible and understandable.

Integrated review, coding and production capabilities OnDemand

Should the investigation or early case assessment reveal that a full review for production is warranted, seamless access to the Axcelerate Review and Analysis platform OnDemand facilitates review without risk or delay. Datasets can be seamlessly moved from Axcelerate Investigation to Axcelerate Review and Analysis OnDemand — providing teams with access to the same powerful analytic tools, coupled with advanced technology-assisted review, automated redaction and an intuitive production wizard to ensure a streamlined, efficient and effective review and production workflow.

By surfacing critical evidence at the earliest possible juncture, Axcelerate Investigation allows legal and investigation teams to accurately assess risk and reward and make informed decisions about whether to pursue or defend an action or what next steps should be in the context of regulatory, compliance, HR or other investigations.

Learn how Axcelerate Investigation can help modernize your approach to investigations and early case assessment.

Share this post

Share this post to x. Share to linkedin. Mail to
Wendy Cole avatar image

Wendy Cole

Wendy is a long-time legal technology and eDiscovery enthusiast. Having participated in many facets of the legal and legal technology industries, her broad range of experience spans from being on the front-line of eDiscovery projects as a civil litigator and eDiscovery counsel, to managing and marketing legal technology software and services for global organizations.

See all posts

More from the author

Accelerating Data Insights: Unleash the Power of OpenText Axcelerate with Aviator

Accelerating Data Insights: Unleash the Power of OpenText Axcelerate with Aviator

Introducing Legal Tech Aviator – the central AI nervous system of our smart legal platform

April 15, 2024 3 minutes read
What the old adage “time is money” means to legal review teams 

What the old adage “time is money” means to legal review teams 

There are a number of ways to understand the “cost” of something, and most definitions of the term begin with money as the chief factor….

August 23, 2023 4 minutes read
Are DACH Organizations Prepared for Internal and Regulatory Investigations?

Are DACH Organizations Prepared for Internal and Regulatory Investigations?

Modern investigations are intensely demanding in every sense of the word. Whether driven by whistleblower allegations, regulatory compliance, or HR issues, the potential fallout for…

April 21, 2023 5 minutes read

Stay in the loop!

Get our most popular content delivered monthly to your inbox.