It is not uncommon to read posts, tweets and emails within the litigation support industry with a firm, corporation or vendor urgently seeking “local” resources at a distant location, whether it be here in the United States or at points around the globe. While sometimes it is simply a matter of practicality, more often than not it is a desperate attempt to satisfy a client who refuses to acknowledge the terms “travel” or “remote” as part of a polite conversation. Why might this be? Well, historically these terms have often resulted in unexpectedly large invoices due to high hourly fees and premium airfare requirements.
One should also note that there are a number of locations in the world where there simply is not enough local demand to support a legal technology business. Many legal systems outside of the US and UK do not have discovery and disclosure requirements, thus there a few resources to support such services. Not only can this be noted for global finance centers such as Shanghai, Zurich and Dubai, but many regions in the United States where there is not a demand for electronic discovery services. Some scanning and reprographics shops have taken the initiative to invest in the appropriate software, but unfortunately may not have the in-house knowledge and experience to execute the requirements of a project successfully. This leaves critical decisions for the corporation and firm involved in a case – blindly search for an unknown vendor with unproven skills or leverage a relationship with a specialist that has a range of direct experience and experience? At what point does cost – or perceived cost – outweigh potential risks such as spoliation?
There are, however, a growing number of options to the historical norms within the industry. Boutique companies such as Global EDD Group are bridging the gap between organizations and their growing national and international electronic discovery needs by leveraging proven experience, low operational expenses and an extensive network of resources to offer clients legal technology services around the globe at price points typically associated with local vendors.
Global EDD Group
Remote & Mobile Resources
Global Network
Technical Hubs: Cleveland, Singapore
Resource Centers: Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Taipei, Tokyo, Washington DC
Mobile Technology Units
Global EDD Group leverages specialized mobile technology units (“MTUs”) that can deploy worldwide with short notice and provide a full range of self-contained electronic discovery services, including:
The MTUs provide an extremely portable and cost-effective alternative to the typical industry approach of “copy and ship” data to an offsite facility for downstream processing. While this approach may be suitable for some projects, it can prove challenging to cases with cross-border privacy concerns, tight deadlines, trade secrets or lack of appropriate resources. Global EDD Group has designed the MTU services to not only alleviate these challenges of shipping data, but to do so at competive price points often comparable to using a local vendor.
Typical Usage Scenarios:
Today’s 24/7/365 global economy often does not allow for server downtime to undertake typical forensic collections, nor do many court mandated deadlines allow enough time to collect data at geographically dispersed locations.
Our data collection teams are able to remotely capture live data – including RAID disks, physical drives, logical volumes, and physical memory (32 & 64 bit Windows) – in a forensically sound manner via IP network connection. We can connect to a target device, whether it is a server located downstairs in the corporate data center or a PC in a remote office halfway around the world, as long as there is connectivity within the corporate network.
Target environments supported include:
Windows: 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, & 7, 32 and 64bit, Physical memory only supported on 32bit and 64bit Windows
Apple OSX: OSX 10.3,10.4,10.5,10.6 Universal Binary, *FK only supports Intel Apple OSX
Linux: most Linux distributions build on Glibc 2.3.5 and higher, Android on ARM, and Embedded Linux
Solaris: Solaris 8, 9, & 10 on SPARC and OpenSolaris on Intel
IBM AIX: AIX 5.1,5.2,5.3,6.1 on the Power processor
HPUX: HP_UX11iv2,11iv3 on the Itanium processor
FreeBSD: AIX 7 on the Intel/i386 processor
SCO: SCO OpenServer 6 and Unixware 7 on the Intel/i386 processor
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