Feature

Morgan Lewis Enhances Global e-Discovery Capability; Launches an EU Data Center

2016年2月18日

With the Schrems decision and other recent EU Commission and European court activity raising uncertainty around data transfers, Morgan Lewis is responding with enhanced services to help clients adapt to the changing landscape. In February 2016, our firm launched a new EU data center to address our clients’ data privacy and disclosure challenges in the EU and wherever they arise around the world.

To spread the word about how global organizations can tap Morgan Lewis’s legal skills and state-of-the-art data center to navigate the conflicting and often vexing data privacy and e-disclosure obligations, we host regular educational seminars. 

The Benefits of Morgan Lewis’s
Global eData Capability

Managing the e-discovery process for litigation, arbitrations, or investigations can be complex and expensive. For more than a decade, global clients have turned to the Morgan Lewis eData team to ease that burden. Leveraging our hybrid group of practicing lawyers and technical professionals and our US data center and technology, we’ve made the e-discovery process more effective and efficient—as well as less costly—for countless companies. 

Morgan Lewis was one of the first firms to offer end-to-end discovery in-house, including start-to-finish counseling, project management, data analytics, processing, hosting, review, and production. We combine a deep bench of discovery litigators and technologists with best-in-class technology to deliver top-shelf value to our clients.

With the goal of turning eData from a liability to an advantage, our eData team partners with our clients’ in-house legal and IT teams to:

  • Create effective legal and technical strategies to reduce regulatory and litigation risks,
  • Streamline the discovery/disclosure process, and
  • Cost-effectively serve each company’s long-term business objectives.

The new Morgan Lewis EU data center enables our team to deliver that same legal advice and strategy, along with EU-compliant data collection, analysis, review, disclosure, and disposition services while addressing any data privacy concerns. Our proprietary EU workflow combines our firm’s legal, technological, and multilanguage capability with EU-compatible managed review to respond to our clients’ international investigations, litigation, and arbitration needs. The practicality and efficiency that are the hallmarks of the US eData practice are now available to clients no matter where they are located.

Our clients enjoy substantial savings throughout the discovery and disclosure lifecycle, including processing, hosting, document review, and analysis, for which we design and leverage industry-leading offshore review, advanced analytics, and predictive coding workflows. Learn more about our eData services.

Q&A with Our Partners

Philadelphia partner Tess Blair and London partner David Waldron spoke with us about the benefits of Morgan Lewis’s global e-discovery services and how clients can best take advantage of our comprehensive offering.  

The Morgan Lewis eData practice has been enormously popular with clients in the United States. Why is it important to launch globally now?

We have worked with US and global clients for many years on US, cross-border, and international discovery and similar data and document requests. We have helped those clients successfully navigate the particular challenges created by the tension between such requests and European and other data privacy law. Recent activity of the EU Commission and European courts has created further uncertainty when it comes to data transfers. 

Our EU data center, which enables us to collect, process, analyze, review, and prepare data and documents for disclosure, all within Europe, eliminates much of that uncertainty and offers our clients a valuable, cost-effective approach. We also offer offshore review in South Africa to further reduce expense in appropriate matters.

What are the most pressing discovery and disclosure challenges for companies on the global stage?

The technical and legal requirements of discovery and disclosure, as well as the potential expense of such exercises, continue to challenge clients, but on the global stage, data privacy laws, expertise, and access are the real challenges. eData brings both legal and technical capability to global clients and is now able to deliver defensible, cost-effective discovery and disclosures services worldwide.

How can clients or prospective clients get the optimal benefit of our new global eData capability?

Call our eData team whenever your litigation or investigation implicates operations, data, or custodians in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or anywhere else on the planet. Our discovery and privacy litigators and technologists will work with you to navigate the laws and technical challenges in a cost-effective, defensible way.