Special Counsels eQ
Special Counsel's eQ: End-to-End Solutions for eDiscovery and Data Retention

The latest innovations have opened new horizons for legal solutions. Today, there are virtual law offices, digital libraries, and legal books making grand entrees as applications. There is a paradigm shift in delivering legal services with the emergence of big data analytics, document automation and self-service legal websites, altering the way people work in the legal arena. Aware of this paradigm shift, Special Counsel eQ provides innovative legal workforce solutions across the spectrum to deliver knowledgeable, professional, and efficient services. Solutions are built around their state-of-the-art facilities which host teams of specialized attorneys as well as vast data stores; “At eQ, we combine project management expertise with proven data processing and workflow solutions to make eDiscovery projects more efficient thereby reducing costs,” says Chris Gallagher, SVP-Global Operations at eQ.

The company offers a range of dedicated services supporting the EDRM; from information governance, litigation management, ECA, processing, hosting and review services. “At eQ, we have over 30 dedicated project managers each with over a decade of experience who break down the complexity, create the most efficient solution, streamline the cost, and improve operational efficiency,” illustrates Gallagher. The seamless workflow across the life cycle is facilitated by the usage of industry leaders like Relativity, Viewpoint, and Nuix which “Support eQ’s goal of strategic early case assessment to limit the ultimate data set propagated to review reducing client’s costs,” extols Gallagher.

eQ has a culture attuned to anticipate and understand their customer’s needs. One recent project involved a national law firm, facing a massive review of over 1.5 million emails in a proprietary file format from over 200+ custodians. The system combined all emails into a single .grp container. This structure makes a typical eDiscovery tool falsely recognize an entire container of emails as a single MIME (.EML) and process the universe of documents as one without any acknowledgment of multiple emails within each container.

Technology has helped level the playing field, the right people behind the technology can lead to amazing things

eQ crafted a custom solution to decompile the utility and fully automate the conversion process. A team of more than 70 attorneys then reviewed the documents for responsiveness, created a privilege log, worked on deposition preparation, motions to compel and privilege challenges to incoming productions. “The implementation of these best practices and partner level project management resources eliminated excess legal spend and kept the project aligned with strict court ordered deadlines” beams Gallagher.

The key differentiating factor as highlighted by Gallagher is the “investment in our people as much as in technology in order to overcome the constantly evolving challenges. The strength is having the experts well versed in the use of the latest technology.” Clients have been asking for partners who can help them in reducing the cost associated with document review projects of any size at the earliest time possible. “We created both our Managed Solutions as well as our eDiscovery practice because we heard our clients loud and clear. They wanted a company with a long stable history, a deep bench, and enough resources worldwide to assist them as needed,” says Gallagher.

“Being part of a Global organization like Adecco with markets in almost 70 countries across the globe allows us the ability to put our expertise into practice virtually anywhere our clients need us,” concludes Gallagher.