In many complex litigation matters, the most important evidence is the data itself. While attorneys focus on e-mail and word-based communication, we focus on the numbers-based data. We are the bridge between outside counsel, the client’s IT staff, general counsel and the electronic evidence vendors who all have access to, but who do not necessarily understand, in totality, what can be derived from the enormous amount of data that is necessary for the operation of a modern enterprise.
It is important to note that we are not an electronic evidence vendor. We understand accounting and the operation of an enterprise. We bring our knowledge of accounting, information systems, financial reporting and operations along with years of real client experiences and solutions to help our clients turn data into information that is useful to the matter at hand. We employ a collaborative approach to locating, analyzing and interpreting the data that is most relevant to resolving your matter.
In many situations, we have found that the data that is most relevant to a litigation matter is present in the organization but is not in a form that is useful to the litigation. We have successfully worked with our client’s IT department to locate, extract, analyze and convert data into information that is relevant to the matter. In other situations, we have worked with the opposing party (pursuant to a meet and confer) to extract data that should be produced in connection with a litigation matter. We then perform the necessary analysis of the data that has been produced.
Our approach has been used in a variety of industries including manufacturing, financial services, mortgage servicing, healthcare and retail, to name a few.
Representative Engagements
Fortune 10 Retailer
- Located relevant point-of-sale and back office systems relevant to the litigation matter.
- Worked with the client’s IT staff to extracted certain key data fields.
- Performed “joins” of the data fields from the various separate computer applications and systems to develop a full and complete forensic transaction analysis for each of the relevant classes of transactions spanning multiple years.
- Developed the analysis that provided our client and its counsel the information to settle the litigation.
Global Industrial Equipment Manufacturer
- A Federal Judge ordered the company to locate and produce the product line sales data for hundreds of products (a subset of which) the company was required to have previously divested pursuant to a DOJ action involving antitrust issues.
- Since the divested products were a subset of the various product lines, the company’s IT department concluded that there was no way to separate the divested products from the product line data sales data.
- By locating and analyzing the manufacturing system’s data dictionary, we were able to locate a series of indicators that would allowed for the identification of the potentially divested products within the company’s product line sales data.
- We worked with the company’s factories in Europe and the Americas to extract the sales data in a way that complied with the Federal Judge’s order.
- The data we obtained spanned a 10-year period and included hundreds of parts that were used in the company’s products.
- The information we extracted, analyzed and joined with the sales data allowed the company to successfully resolve the litigation matter that spawned the Federal Judge’s order.
Mortgage Loan Servicer
- Performed data analytic procedures in connection with a class action filed against one of the USA’s largest mortgage loan services.
- Participated in multiple meet and confer meetings to develop a list of the data fields that needed to be extracted from the servicer’s systems.
- Participated in meet and confer meetings to develop a list of the data fields that needed to be extracted from the systems belonging to a third-party insurance provider that the servicer had a relationship with.
- Obtained and analyzed the relevant data fields. Developed algorithms to join the mortgage servicer’s data to the third-party insurance provider’s data in an effort to identify the members of the plaintiff class.
- Calculated the damages sustained by each class member over a period of eight years.
- The amounts due to the class members were distributed by the settlement administrator using the calculations performed by our firm.