Market
Topic: DESCRIPTION Date: 2013-11-06 14:04:28
Asian eDiscovery Note: FTI Consulting is making a concerted effort in the Asian eDiscovery market based out of their Hong Kong facilities. In 2012, they hired Richard Kershaw as Managing Director to build and manage the Asian practice. Mr. Kershaw is one the most recognized personalities in the Asian eDiscovery market and will be able to leverage his background (LECG, Catalyst, Hill & Assoc) and experience with large multi-lingual projects to close business for FTI. Typically an individual doesn't have that much of an impact for a company the size of FTI, but for the wide open market in Asia where there are no clear market leaders, having an experienced, recognized expert could be a short-term advantage. We will continue to closely watch the growth of FTI in the Asian eDiscovery market. FTI Consulting utilizes the standard forensic toolkits for collecting data (EnCase, FTK, etc.) and then will use their own technology (Document Mapper for categorization and Ringtail for review) for dealing with CJK data. FTI's Asia team has experience processing of both Unicode and non-Unicode CJK to prevent character garbling in display, and index and search challenges of CJK data.
FTI Asia also will use 3rd party processing applications as needed. FTI Asia also can bring together a review team of contract reviewers as needed. A case study was presented (which included the law firm that hired FTI) about a company in a Chinese province that needed to respond to a US litigation request in a short time line. FTI was able to pull together a team to collect data containing various CJK languages, process the data, and load into Document Mapper for analysis by the contract review team. There was an extremely small pool of available bilingual contract attorneys with ability to review the documents, but FTI was able to build the team in order to meet the timelines. This case study illuminates many different challenges including data privacy and potential state secret concerns. Redaction of the names of the individuals and email addresses in the documents and creation of an "Alias Management" system so that the documents could be sent to the US without violating any privacy regulations were required. This case study is an interesting one because these types of projects are common in the Asian market, highlighting the importance of collaboration between law firm, corporation, and vendor to navigate these concerns and to meet the deadlines.
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