Big Data investigations | Asian Legal Business

By Scott Warren, General Manager, Head of Japan, Epiq Systems, eDiscovery Solutions

Big Data

Everyone is talking about ‘Big Data’ these days. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: ‘Big Data’ is an accumulation of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional database management tools. And no wonder, given how fast digital information has expanded over the last several years. An IDC (International Data Corporation) study estimates digital information to double every two years between now and 2020 to 40 trillion gigabytes, which equates to 5.2 terabytes of data for every man, woman and child alive in 2020. It is estimated that the number of networked devices now exceeds the total population of the Earth.

So how does one conduct an internal corporate investigation when faced with the massive amounts of digital data that the average corporation accumulates? Since many investigations focus on potential wrongdoing, there may be people within the organization that do not want you to find out the facts.

I’ve always found the key to a successful investigation is to identify the truth as quickly, quietly and thoroughly as possible. To do so, I suggest you effectively manage the ‘Four Ts’: Tactics, Tools, Technology and Teamwork.

Tactics

The first step is to identify where the data resides: digital data is often on PCs, network file & e-mail servers, smartphones, back-up tapes, and other storage devices. If it is important to keep the investigation covert (unknown to your employees), then you may want to consider gathering data from just the network file and email servers, as that enables you to limit involvement to only a few trusted IT staff. A good general rule is to over-collect data that might be relevant, since if the investigation becomes known, some employees may delete data. At this point, you will likely have a large amount of digital evidence: i.e. Big Data, which you will want to filter using the next step: Tools.

Tools

To handle Big Data, you need a set of tools that allows you to effectively cull the data, removing irrelevant employees, file types, junk mail, dates outside the scope of the investigation, etc. Then, you will likely search the data using keywords that might help you find relevant documents. For example, if you want to find whether improper communications have happened with a competitor, you could use the competitor’s name to search for any email or documents that refer to them. A good tool will highlight those words in the documents for ease of review. Some tools will also provide a communications diagram, graphically showing you the lines of communication between various employees on a particular topic.

This allows the investigator to quickly identify who was talking about topics of interest. Email threading can be quite helpful as well, as it lines up all of the various email threads in one row, allowing you to read the entire thread at one time, rather than on a piecemeal basis.

Technology

Use of Technological Assisted Review (TAR) can further significantly enhance your investigation by helping to push relevant documents to the front of the stack of items to review. A lead investigator trains the system as to what they find relevant and the system builds an algorithm (mathematical formula) to find similar documents. This technology is gaining increasing support in the US, as we at Epiq have seen from more than 160 TAR cases supported to date, including in front of the US Department of Justice. We recently conducted a test of TAR in Japanese in a matter where a traditional keyword-only search had been done leading to an identification of approximately 74,000 documents to be reviewed. However, our study revealed statistically, that by reviewing fewer than 20,000 documents using TAR-trained system, we could have found 80 percent of the relevant documents. We have also utilized TAR for matters in Chinese. The ability to see these documents so quickly allows the entire investigation to be far more effective and cost-efficient.

Teamwork

Often, one of the biggest challenges of any sizeable internal investigation is that the internal investigative/compliance team (if one exists), rarely has the size and Multilanguage ability needed to effectively review all of the pan-Asia data in a timely fashion. One option is to find an investigative partner experienced in doing document review in investigations and other litigation matters. In our case, we have more than 1,500 review seats and a database of over 16,000 legal professionals available to us on short notice worldwide. Of those, we have 30 seats in Japan and 24 in Hong Kong, providing expert document review services in almost every language, led by bilingual US attorneys, and all from a state-of-the-art, secure facility, designed to keep information truly confidential.

Should the need arise, such a team can effectively work with your investigative team to quickly identify and focus on the critical points.

The four Ts

By using the ‘Four Ts’ – Tactics, Tools, Technology and Teamwork – you can conquer the challenges of Big Data investigations. They can also be helpful in doing compliance testing to determine whether you have potential problems (such as a price fixing cartel or Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery risks).

Simply get some departmental Big Data, and do some critical spot-checking to see what might arise as a concern.

Big Data is a reality in nearly every company now. So should the need arise, please consider the Four Ts to help you in analyzing your company’s Big Data.

Scott Warren has been investigating cases, from paper to digital for more than 30 years. A former trial attorney in Los Angeles, he moved to Japan in 1993 and was General Counsel for Sega and Senior Attorney for Microsoft, before becoming a Managing Director for Kroll. He now heads Epiq Systems in Japan (www.epiqsystems.com), one of the world’s largest provider of legal technology for corporations and the law firms that represent them. As such, he has led hundreds of internal digital investigations including trade secret leaks, cyber attacks, employee misconduct, financial fraud, government probes and many other areas. Contact him at swarren@epiqsystems.com.

Epiq Systems has offices in Hong Kong, Japan, the US, Canada and the UK. In Asia, they can process and host data in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai.