Evidence and disclosure management / e-discovery

Regulatory enquiries, legal disputes and special investigations are often unavoidable in day-to-day business and usually occur suddenly. We support you in advance and work with you to develop a plan to deal with them effectively. We focus on customised solutions that meet your requirements, from the risk profile through to implementation.

Historically grown data structures and inventories regularly make it difficult to process e-discovery cases appropriately. We utilise our many years of experience and ask the right questions so that the relevant data sources are identified. At the same time, we support you in correctly delineating data sources so that both data protection and individual interests are taken into account.

We secure your data in a court of law, anywhere in the world. The globally distributed locations of the KPMG network enable evidence data to be secured quickly and efficiently. Our forensics experts always maintain data integrity and document the entire chain of custody. A wide variety of source media such as laptops, servers, clouds, mobile phones, etc. can therefore be recorded and fed into the e-discovery process.

Preparation takes place in a multi-stage process that includes pre-processing the backed-up data. This involves removing irrelevant technical data, such as system files, etc. In addition, initial deduplication is carried out and the data is harmonised. This also includes the conversion of documents, images and email attachments into searchable text formats (OCR). The data is then prepared for efficient review, for example by displaying consistent chat histories in the review environment

Early Case Assessment

We use Early Case Assessments (ECA) for early assessment and case evaluation. In the initial phase of an investigation, these provide an initial overview of the case and the associated data and pave the way for the appropriate detailed assessment. Gaps in communication and missing documents can be identified using suitable analyses. Aggregation algorithms reveal dominant topics and relationships between people. Visualisations can help to ask the right questions right at the start of the investigation and further develop investigation approaches.

Predictive Coding

The targeted use of machine learning in the e-discovery environment can help to achieve increases in effectiveness and efficiency. An "active learning" algorithm is trained to recognise and suggest potentially relevant communication and documents and support the efficient processing of complex projects. Continuous review by human analysts combines the advantages of both worlds and enables better prioritisation and shorter review times.

AI / GenAI

Innovative and contemporary generative AI technologies are used to make your data analysis processes more efficient and open up new possibilities. AI-supported e-discovery solutions based on generative AI recognise complex data patterns and correlations that can be difficult for human reviewers to grasp. Using generative AI in the review process ensures a consistent and efficient review of documents and speeds up the e-discovery process. AI-supported relevance assessment also makes it easier to find important documents quickly. 

KPMG offers you the option of carrying out the review yourself, having it carried out by your lawyers or using our managed review services.

User-friendly tools

We provide you with a range of leading review and analysis software on a central platform. We support individual evaluation requirements with our own data analyses. In any case, our aim is to provide you with insights from communication, documents and data as early as possible. This enables you to make quick decisions regarding the content and cost-effectiveness of investigations. You benefit not only from increasingly effective software solutions and visualisations, but also from our accounting expertise.

Managed Review Services

We offer managed review on a 1st and 2nd level basis. We combine technology and human expertise to provide you with an economically viable and court-proof evaluation. As part of the 1st-level review, we carry out an initial classification of the data for relevant content. This review helps to significantly reduce large volumes of data and thus concentrate on the relevant facts. The 2nd level review supports you in generating a tangible condensed result based on the facts at hand. Our experts from the fields of special forensic investigations and lawyers assess each individual document.

Personnel

Our extensive experience in project management is particularly advantageous for large-scale projects. Our experienced e-discovery project managers pay particular attention to the high efficiency of (parallel) investigations, quality aspects and a balanced cost-benefit ratio. If required, we can assist with the development of discovery strategies and interfaces between external and internal stakeholders.

In the context of legal disputes and enquiries from supervisory authorities, court-proof data exports from the review environment are usually required. KPMG has extensive experience and expertise in helping you export data in the appropriate scope and format, which can vary greatly from authority to authority. E-discovery productions require particular care, as the delivery of too much or too little data must be avoided.

We are happy to provide you with the entire technical platform for your document review. We import your data into our security-certified Forensic Data Centre (FDC) or our RelativityOne environment and make it available to the relevant parties.

With our state-of-the-art Forensic Data Center, we have an ISO27001 security-certified data centre that is explicitly tailored to forensic analyses. We use the latest technology and software to enable the most efficient analyses possible.  If you wish, you can access your stored data for selected applications remotely around the clock. We support you with our professional analyses and interactive visualisation dashboards.