Press Releases

Global Leader Empowers Corporations to Reduce Complexity and Cost for the Entire E-Discovery Process

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE: FCN), the global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance their enterprise value, today announced the launch of Ringtail QuickCull, a new pre-configured hardware and software package for e-discovery. With rapid deployment and out-of-the-box functionality, QuickCull enables corporations to cull and analyze data on-premise prior to review by outside counsel, providing earlier insight into data and dramatic e-discovery cost reduction.

"It has been my experience that deploying Ringtail QuickCull for pre-processing, culling, triage review, and data export dramatically streamlines the most time and technology intensive parts of data collection and production while maintaining forensic integrity," said Joseph Perkovich, associate with Dorsey & Whitney LLP. "Due to QuickCull's rapid implementation and reliability in digesting data, I am aware of no better discovery tool for use in enforcement or investigative actions brought by prosecutors, regulators or legislative committees."

Upon installation, users can immediately begin indexing data and quickly identify duplicate files, which are automatically tagged for efficiency. Hidden files and columns, tracked changes and other modifications are also available to view. Reviewers can search for documents using a variety of search methods, including keywords and complex Boolean queries that can also be restricted to specific metadata fields. QuickCull then presents documents for preview, allowing reviewers to mark and tag individual documents in preview mode. These markings are saved for export into processing, review and analysis tools via the EDRM XML standard, an industry standard for which FTI took a leadership position to develop. QuickCull is also Unicode compliant to support international requirements.

"Our corporate clients not only want cost-effective tools for today's needs, but also smart investments that help support a long-term e-discovery strategy," said Patrick Strong, senior managing director of FTI Technology, a business unit of FTI Consulting. "QuickCull meets this challenge by providing immediate out-of-the-box benefits and a clear path for streamlining the e-discovery process for future matters."

Cost Reduction

The vast majority of data that corporations save and collect for e-discovery - whether in enterprise content management (ECM) systems, line of business (LOB) applications or other storage repositories - are not relevant to legal or regulatory matters. However, many corporations collect any and all data within the parameters of a case - all of the emails of ten key custodians, for example - and then work with their law firm or a legal service provider to facilitate processing and review. If the irrelevant data is eliminated earlier in the process, clients reduce the cost of not only of potentially extraneous processing, but also legal review by focusing on the data that matters to the facts at hand.

"When organizations had access to unlimited financial resources, dealing with the combination of corporate data growth and surging electronic discovery requests was fairly basic: hire more people to complete complex tasks such as first pass and comprehensive reviews," said Brian Babineau, senior industry analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Clearly, the economy has dictated a more frugal approach to resource utilization, but data growth and frequency of matters involving ESI have not subsided leaving organizations no choice but to leverage technology to cut costs. In our opinion, one of the easiest ways to cut electronic discovery costs is to invest in solutions that cut the data set as early in the process as possible."

Understanding Data Earlier

QuickCull users can index, search, cull and preview datasets within hours of collection without sending data off-site. In addition, QuickCull searches the data by a variety of methods, including keywords, data ranges and custodians, providing an early view into the likely responsive documents.

This enables in-house teams to understand the data better and earlier in the process, as well as providing significant strategic advantage.

Springboard for Streamlined E-Discovery

Large corporations manage hundreds of matters annually and struggle with controlling the cost of the often complex e-discovery process. A significant component of the complexity and cost is due to a crowded yet disparate e-discovery vendor market. According to the 2009 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey, there are over 600 vendors that claim to offer e-discovery products or services, and for those offering products, the majority provide niche tools that address one or two of the nine e-discovery steps, as laid out by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, or EDRM. For corporations seeking to simplify their e-discovery process with fewer tools and vendors, QuickCull represents an integrated component of FTI Technology's complete e-discovery portfolio of software, services and consulting.

QuickCull is the latest product from FTI, which also offers Attenex Patterns and Ringtail Legal software, two of the top e-discovery tools according to the annual Socha-Gelbmann survey. The addition of QuickCull enables corporations to cull, process, review, analyze and produce data using one integrated platform and a single provider. QuickCull, Attenex and Ringtail all provide customizable, repeatable workflows that are backed by a highly scalable SQL database. In addition, all three products are offered as either on-demand or on-premise deployments, so corporations can customize the solutions to meet their particular IT environment and litigation profile.

FTI can help clients manage and execute the entire e-discovery process, including identification and collection, with the company's expert consultants as well. Located around the globe, FTI consultants have managed hundreds of e-discovery matters, ranging from internal corporate fraud investigations, multinational litigation, Hart Scott Rodino "second requests," and structured data discovery.

"For our clients, the new QuickCull appliance is a catalyst for a long-term, strategic approach to e-discovery," said David Remnitz, senior managing director and technology segment leader for FTI Technology. "For FTI Technology, QuickCull represents another important step for us in broadening our offerings to support our clients' complete e-discovery needs."

The QuickCull appliance is available from FTI Technology in the fourth quarter of 2009. For more information, please visit www.ftitechnology.com.

About FTI Consulting

FTI Consulting, Inc. is a global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance enterprise value in an increasingly complex legal, regulatory and economic environment. With more than 3,500 employees located in most major business centers in the world, we work closely with clients every day to anticipate, illuminate, and overcome complex business challenges in areas such as investigations, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory issues, reputation management and restructuring. More information can be found at www.fticonsulting.com.

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FTI, QuickCull , Attenex , Patterns , and Ringtail are registered trademarks of FTI Consulting, Inc.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE FTI Consulting, Inc.

CONTACT:
Kate Andrejack Holmes of
FTI Consulting, Inc.,
+1-206-373-6521,
Kate.holmes@fticonsulting.com
Web Site: http://www.fticonsulting.com
(FCN)