KNJ360: Confluence Of Litigation And Technology

“The legal market, as it relates to technology, has radically evolved over the past 25 years,” begins Kirk Carter, Founder & Managing Partner of KNJ360. Initially, the legal sector was slow to adopt technology changes with legitimate concerns revolving around the confidentiality of client information. However, now with the influx of trends such as virtualization and cloud security, firms are embracing technology for the cost- and time-saving benefits. Technology is standardizing, productizing, and automating what were once labor-intensive tasks performed by lawyers. Technology is impacting the legal industry in ways that were previously unimaginable--narrowing ‘practice’ and expanding ‘business of law’ (legal operations) and creating new business models, to name a few. A recent ALM intelligent reveals how the space has evolved over the span of 20 years. 73 percent of ‘legal’ work is now performed in-house and an additional 2 percent by service providers, leaving law firms with only a 25 percent market share.

One of the promising players in the current market, transforming the way technology is leveraged in the practice of law in is KNJ360, an e-discovery consulting boutique that develops innovative and effective workflows for risk management and electronic discovery affairs. KNJ360 has adopted technology without entangling itself in the risk-averse, change-averse culture of the industry and stands firm in its outlook of calibrating their litigation expertise with technology. The company envisions a future where businesses maintain agility and innovation while deploying secure, business intelligence tools and employing business analysts to march steadily forward with a more data-driven approach.

Team KNJ360

The KNJ360 team, composed of e-discovery consultants and technology specialists, share similar values and philosophies, and are driven by a single goal to deliver excellence in all forms. The firm develops innovative and efficient workflows for risk management and electronic discovery cases. Moreover, with a software-agnostic strategy towards top-tier technologies, KNJ360 customizes implementations to suit individual corporate environments and produces timely and defensible solutions to legal issues. Striving to build deeper relationships with their clients, the team at KNJ360 works tirelessly to craft the right-fit solution for each case.

Faced with new discovery challenges on any given day, the firm’s seasoned and accomplished team of project managers and litigation technology professionals provides expert e-discovery consulting services to corporations, law firms, and government entities. Handpicked and highly qualified, Team KNJ360 is trained and certified in forensic examinations, SQL database administration, electronic data handling, and review software training. Moreover, with their deep understanding of the litigation process, KNJ360’s team of consultants help clients smoothly navigate the often-treacherous waters of e-discovery.

As data continually grows exponentially, the need to manage that data, collect data, and create ever-changing workflow has become very challenging for clients. KNJ360 provides a solution and educates clients to understand the data and how it interrelates.Whether it is a corporation, law firm, or a government entity, KNJ360’s team provides round-the-clock guidance regardless of different time zones. In the case of corporations, KNJ360 helps reduce dependency on outside counsel and assists in-house legal departments with the management of large e-discovery requests. For law firms, KNJ360 proves to be an invaluable resource providing defensible technology-driven strategies. For government organizations, KNJ360 has the ability to help and manage their electronically stored information (ESI) while enabling the organization to control it within their secure environment. Most importantly, KNJ360 works to bridge the gap between legal counsel and IT by translating legal needs into IT requirements and providing a solution that makes sense—plus saves time and resources. KNJ360 focuses on helping companies become more efficient, compliant, and litigation ready.

The Secret Sauce

The combined 90 years of experience of Team KNJ360 ensures that each client receives exceptional professional and consulting services. With specialization in facilitating efficient discovery of challenging ESI, KNJ360 provides a suite of services to assist with the discovery, review, and production of electronic evidence for litigation and internal investigations. The firm’s professional services include forensic collection, early case assessment (ECA), ESI processing, data hosting, production services, and project management. The forensic collection allows for the pristine copy and preservation of ESI from some resources like networks, servers, personal computers, backup tapes, removable digital devices, mobile phones, hosted data repositories, email and cloud-based email, and social networking sites, to name a few. ECA—KNJ360’s key phase in the workflow—helps streamline processing and analysis by providing visibility upfront into the potentially responsive data landscape. The firm’s ECA tool of choice is its proprietary solution called C360, which is slated to launch in early 2018 officially. Data hosting offers a collection of powerful, internally hosted e-discovery reviews platforms like Viewpoint, Relativity, and InControl. ESI processing offers several data processing solutions for preparing electronic documents into a suitable format for review and analysis. In addition to these, KNJ360 provides production services that assist with both electronic and paper discovery production requests, from TIFF conversions to electronic endorsements, to trial exhibit preparation.

KNJ360’s consulting services include litigation preparedness, computer forensic analysis, e-discovery workflow design, and custom coding for problem data. Each one methodically planned and managed to ensure a successful project execution. When litigation arises, understanding the client’s existing ESI environment and having an action plan in place to find relevant data are the most important steps to set the tone for a thorough and defensible e-discovery investigation.

In this regard, KNJ360 assists the client with the creation of an ESI retention policy, crafting a legal hold policy, interviewing custodians, mapping, identifying, and indexing source data (live and archived) to securely and defensibly preserve potentially responsive ESI. KNJ360’s computer forensics experts serve as a compass to navigate through a defensible ESI collection strategy. Achieving the most efficient means of identifying, preserving, and collecting potentially relevant case data, the firm’s EnCE^® certified team performs forensic analysis, such as retrieving and restoring deleted files, identifying hidden data, and cracking passwords utilizing state-of-the-art forensic tools and industry best practices to ensure a forensically sound deliverable. KNJ360’s expertise also lies in the development of creative and defensible workflows that are customized on a case-by-case basis. The firm designs seamless workflows, from ESI collection to final document production, confronting budget and proportionality concerns. And lastly, through custom scripting and coding, KNJ360 identifies problematic data by dissecting and studying it to determine the most effective way to process it.

"We strive to be collaborative partners with our clients, helping them every step of the way and giving them 360 degrees of visibility and transparency into the process"

Show of Strength

With all the services and solutions at hand to solve litigation issues effectively, Carter still believes that ‘the greatest skill that the company learned together is being a great listener.’ Metaphorically expanding on the same he continues, “We operate as though our toolbox is not fixed. We aggressively search for tools that address existing and new requirements. Yesterday's hammer may need to be replaced or enhanced by a wrench, screwdriver, or drill. We want to keep our toolbox agnostic and our solutions relevant.” KNJ360 differentiates itself from their peers by driving their attention towards being more customer-focused and accountable for their actions. “We combine our experience with that of our clients to continuously craft an advanced toolset to meet and exceed the project requirements,” he adds. An excellent example of their client-focused approach shows in the way KNJ360 handled the case of a client who had difficulties managing their litigation with their in-house practitioners. The client desperately needed to find a way to collect and preserve data effectively for all active and inactive users. While running searches, the client frustratingly managed to yield 0 hits on relevant documents. In reply, KNJ360 built and implemented a new data archive solution within two weeks that complied with the client’s retention policies, and had the client’s search environment up and running, capable of completing designated tasks much more efficiently. As a show of strength, in the new environment, the client was able to run searches over millions of records yielding 2,700 hits within only 21 minutes.

The 14-year old company, though being a successful pioneer in the use of litigation technology, has charted out an ambitious roadmap for its future that consists of plans to deliver a suite of turnkey solutions and services under one roof. Envisaging the company’s path forward, Carter concludes, “We don’t want to be limited or have boundaries like a lot of our great competitors who only sell software or hardware or only sell services. We strive to be collaborative partners with our clients, helping them every step of the way and giving them 360 degrees of visibility and transparency into the process.”