KPMG Forensic Technology Services Releases e-Discovery Analysis Report, Enhanced Tool

NEW YORK, Aug. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A new white paper from audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP describes the enhanced cash management and cost benefits of properly utilizing electronic discovery (e-discovery) software, to improve data analysis and document defensibility for corporate legal departments and law firms.

The KPMG paper, Software-assisted Document Review: An ROI Your GC Can Appreciate, provides case studies on how to improve the document review and management processes, with an eye to effectively utilizing e-discovery software to help cut costs and provide standardization for legal discovery activities. It was released by KPMG's Forensic Technology Services (FTS) during the International Legal Technology Association's annual conference in Nashville, Tenn., this week.

"Leveraged properly, effective e-discovery software can reduce inconsistencies in the early stages of document reviews," said Richard H. Girgenti, the Forensic Service Line Leader for KPMG.

Girgenti said corporate legal departments and law firms have a focus on driving cost out of their discovery processes, especially since it often takes multiple levels of review to narrow the documentation for any litigation to the most relevant documents in a defensible, accurate, timely, and cost-effective manner.

KPMG's FTS network also has unveiled Discovery Radar 4.1 (DR4.1), an upgrade to its existing offering that enhances IT logic for case management and provides users with decision points to determine how best to manage and filter e-discovery documentation, said Chris Paskach, KPMG's FTS network leader..

"Utilizing our advanced technology, lawyers preparing a case file can detect patterns across terabytes of document data," Paskach said.

Kelli Brooks, a KPMG principal for Evidence and Discovery Management, noted that document review remains one of the most costly and time-consuming aspects of the discovery phase in most matters, consuming 50 percent to 80 percent of the overall expense of case preparation.

"Software like DR4.1 can significantly reduce unwanted 'noise' in an increasingly precise manner by starting with initial review decisions made by a human and then employing sophisticated search and retrieval algorithms to 'learn' to focus only on relevant documents," she said.

Paskach said KPMG's FTS network developed DR4.1 to automate data analysis that cuts through the complexity of legal action by utilizing metadata values and file types in a seamlessly integrated industry-accepted standard technology. DR4.1 provides for audit trails of activity, cost monitoring, and custom reports on data and content.

Paskach said DR 4.1 provides:

• Integrated filters to help users narrow the criteria for documents selection, and allows for filtering a large variety of categories. Sample sort categories include file extensions, names, date sequences, custodian, file type, similar concepts and a "concept clustering" capability.
• Advanced keyword analysis capabilities, such as stemming and Thesaurus functionality, proximity analysis and multiple-color highlighting for easy identification at a glance.
• A dashboard to help users monitor "chain of custody."
• Added management tools, such as the ability to re-prioritize document processing activities to align with changing case requirements.

About KPMG LLP

KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm (www.us.kpmg.com), is the U.S. member firm of KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International.")  KPMG International's member firms have 138,000 professionals, including more than 7,900 partners, in 150 countries.

SOURCE KPMG LLP