Use of data science for most organizations is not a discretionary topic – it is vital to their success and competitive advantage in many areas. This is particularly true in the context of investigations, cyber risk and compliance solutions and other legal matter. Only firms with strong legal-domain knowledge coupled with expert-level capabilities in electronic evidence and data science are able to successfully manage a matter or solution in a timely and cost-effective manner. Use of statistics, unsupervised learning, predictive analytics and other data mining tools are leveraged to find the gold otherwise lost in data.
Working with our client and team, we leverage a 3-step, sequential process for all matters and consultations involving electronic data:
- First, determine all relevant legal, policy, compliance and regulatory issues as well as client priorities and goals.
- Establish and identify the electronic data necessary to accommodate goals in step #1.
- Then, and only after completion of step #2, determine if and how data-science tools may add value – very often, this will be the case.
This 3-step process is the only way that cases involving electronic data and data science can be handled. In our experience, any other approach leads to misapplication of data-science tools.
Advanced Data Analytics
There are often occasions where boilerplate, pre-configured data-analytics tools do not provide the fine-grained level of control needed to truly glean as much useful information as possible from data. Accordingly, we use API’s offered by state-of-the-art open-source and commercial applications to tailor a solution specifically to the needs at hand. We find that the following technologies are most useful in investigations and compliance solutions to find and utilize the most critical information quickly and efficiently. These tools are often used together and in an iterative fashion to maximize results: