Q. Who is a typical WorkProducts customer?
A. Our primary customer is the Office of the General Counsel in a company facing numerous lawsuits and/or investigations each year. These legal matters typically involve large amounts of ESI stored on a variety of data sources. Our customer is faced with the significant challenge of identifying, preserving and collecting all relevant structured and unstructured ESI for each legal matter in a manner that is efficient, thorough, cost-effective and compliant with the recently-amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Q. What is MatterSpace?
A. MatterSpace is a secure, plug-and-play hardware and software appliance that rapidly and seamlessly integrates into a company's data center and network environment. It enables a corporate legal department to easily and cost-effectively manage all matter-specific ESI. Once installed, MatterSpace "crawls" the network, identifying, preserving, collecting, indexing, and de-duplicating all relevant structured and unstructured ESI specific to each litigation or investigation. In parallel, it facilitates collaboration among all concerned parties and monitors and tracks all ESI communications and events, including litigation holds.
Q. What are the key features of MatterSpace?
A. Key features include:
- The ability to create a separate database, or "matter space," for each matter or case, enabling true evidence lifecycle management on a case-by-case basis
- Role-based permissions, collaboration, and communications that enable comprehensive tracking, auditing, and reporting of all ESI-specific activities and events
- Robust searches of ESI that reduce the volume of material produced for review by outside counsel
- The ability to export selected ESI to standard review platforms such as Concordance, Summation, and Ringtail
Q. What benefits does MatterSpace offer?
A. Companies adopting MatterSpace significantly reduce the risks and costs of managing ESI through MatterSpace's ability to:
- Provide a comprehensive understanding of all relevant, matter-specific ESI
- Improve the speed and quality of ESI delivery by leveraging automated, predictable, and repeatable appliance-based processes
- Leverage in-house de-duplication and culling to reduce the need for third-party ESI processing and legal review
- Provide information critical to developing optimal legal strategies and enable companies to prepare more rapidly and thoroughly for initial meet-and-confer sessions
- Provide a complete audit trail of all matter-specific ESI-related activities and events necessary for compliance with recently-amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Q. What distinguishes MatterSpace from other solutions on the market?
A. Unlike competitive solutions that focus primarily on the identification, preservation and collection of ESI, MatterSpace performs these vital tasks while also eliciting and facilitating collaboration among all concerned parties and monitoring and tracking all ESI communications and events, including litigation holds. MatterSpace provides a comprehensive, automated, and auditable ELM solution that integrates a company's eRecords management systems with downstream eDiscovery products and services.
Q. How is MatterSpace offered?
A. MatterSpace is a plug-and-play hardware and software appliance that is available as either an enterprise solution or as a service provided by a certified WorkProducts Alliance Partner.
Q. What impact does MatterSpace have on discovery costs and workflow efficiencies?
A. Companies are seeing discovery cost reductions of up to 5x and workflow efficiency improvements of up to 10x.
Q. How is MatterSpace search performed and optimized?
A. As part of its identification, preservation and collection processing, MatterSpace indexes all of the collected files. That index is then fully searchable. In the case of simple searches, refining the search terms and reprocessing is easy and fast. Alternatively sub-searches by search clusters representing file authors, file types or file years is one click away. Additionally, in the case of complex searches, the user can execute Advanced Searches utilizing Boolean and mathematical operators, concept generation from advanced linguistics, and full-featured "search within results" searches.
Q. What type of performance is offered by the MatterSpace appliance?
A. The base MatterSpace appliance allows multi-threaded processing, meaning multiple "strings" crawl, index, and collect files simultaneously — in most cases, four simultaneous crawls will be optimal. Expected performance from the appliance will be in the range of 3GB to 8GB per hour. Each instance of the appliance will provide the same performance. Additionally, clustered storage for an appliance provides an optimal usage of MatterSpace licenses but slightly reduces performance.
Q. Does MatterSpace do a forensically-sound collection?
A. While MatterSpace does not do a "forensic" collection in the bit-by-bit drive reproduction sense, for files being copied, it does perform a forensically-sound collection. It does this by placing unaltered copies of the original native files in a "wrapper." As a result, the metadata is intact and the file is unaltered and stored on the appliance. Hence, if the original source location version of the file is removed, there remains a forensically-sound instance of the file. Forensics investigations can be further refined through MatterSpace's robust functionality.
Q. Is metadata changed when MatterSpace collects the native files?
A. No. MatterSpace performs a forensically-sound collection by placing unaltered copies of the original native files in a "wrapper." Hence, the metadata is intact and the file is unaltered and stored on the appliance.
Q. Does MatterSpace support the search and production of full text and metadata for each file?
A. MatterSpace is engineered to augment full-featured review and production products, providing a powerful tool for culling data and exporting it to these review platforms. MatterSpace offers a robust search capability — searching against text and metadata for all files collected. The product is designed so that the files selected by the search processes can then be exported natively to popular review platforms (e.g., Concordance, Ringtail, Summation, etc.), or via API to other platforms/formats. These exports include both the native files and the metadata and text files in standard formats.
Q. What skill level is required to use MatterSpace?
A. There are different user levels within MatterSpace. However, the product's intuitive design makes each level intuitive and easy to use. Each "matter" (case or investigation) is managed by a Master Coordinator for high-level administration. This can be a legal department person or an IT administrator. There can be additional Case Coordinators assigned to all or different aspects of case management. These would typically be legal department lawyers or staff. The people from whom data is collected (often referred to as Custodians) are called Participants. Their interactions with the system are limited and straightforward, so Custodians should have little difficulty interacting with the system. The final role within MatterSpace is the Observer. The intent of this role is that it can apply to 30(b)(6) deponents litigation support consultants, and/or outside legal team. Observers are able to view everything in a MatterSpace database, but cannot change anything. They are permitted to access all of the extensive audit logs of the system and generate reports for the legal team and/or the court (e.g., to demonstrate that what the MatterSpace client did for identification, preservation and collection was reasonable and compliant with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or other applicable legal standards).
