Enhanced KPMG Discovery Radar® Reduces e-Discovery Costs

NEW YORK, Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Spreadsheets pose a unique challenge in e-discovery since they often contain data that extends beyond traditional print layouts and margins.  Lawyers often spend many hours manually redacting data in spreadsheets that have been converted to TIFF or PDF images.  Time and money spent on spreadsheet redaction and production can now be drastically reduced due to upgrades to KPMG LLP's Discovery Radar® software.

The enhancements from KPMG allow the document reviewers to interact with the native spreadsheet rather than un-formatted and unwieldy TIFF or PDF images that often do not reflect the document creator's true intention or show hidden rows, columns and formulas.  This new enhancement also enables production of redacted native spreadsheets which eliminate the complexity of spreadsheet conversion to TIFF or PDF.

"Legal innovation hasn't always advanced at the same pace as technology," said Kelli J. Brooks, KPMG's U.S. co-leader for Forensic Technology Services.  "In this age of smart phones, e-signatures, e-newsletters and e-books, we still revert to paper for many litigation tasks such as redacting privileged information from spreadsheets.  These manual processes can significantly drive up the cost of managing complex cases." 

In addition to simplifying redaction, the latest version of KPMG's e-discovery technology continues to offer integrated processing, early case assessment, and technology assisted review (TAR), statistical sampling support and production capabilities, all with a defensible audit history. 

"In this era of big data, when companies are creating and retaining more electronically stored information, much of which is in a structured format such as spreadsheets, it benefits neither outside counsel or their clients to waste valuable time and cost in manually sorting through volumes of documents," said Richard H. Girgenti, Principal, KPMG LLP.  "Firms that take advantage of proven technology avoid the consequences of undetected human error and enjoy a competitive advantage with more time to prepare for a case and provide a higher-level of counsel.  KPMG has made significant investments in forensic technology and is committed to continuous improvements to help our clients advance compliance and monitoring, investigations, fraud and legal risk management."

About Discovery Radar®
Discovery Radar® incorporates KPMG's proprietary Global Evidence Tracking System®, and is delivered through a secure cloud environment.  The software is designed to help improve process and project management from the identification through production phases of the Electronic-Discovery Reference Model.  Electronic-Discovery Reference Model was created by the legal industry to help develop guidelines and standards for e-discovery consumers and providers

More information about KPMG's forensic technology can be found here.

About KPMG LLP
KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm (www.kpmg.com/us), is the U.S. member firm of KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International").  KPMG International's member firms have 152,000 professionals, including more than 8,600 partners, in 156 countries.

SOURCE KPMG LLP