Early Case Assessment (ECA)»

Making the right decisions early in the litigation lifecycle will help practitioners formulate and guide litigation strategy for the case, helping to answer the question of whether to settle or defend litigation by gaining an early understanding of the collected case data.

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Early Case Assessment (ECA) strategies are a key source of cost savings for clients in complex litigation involving eDiscovery.

By focusing on the most relevant data through various processes, hardware, and software solutions, BlueStar can assist our clients to determine the appropriate course of their litigation strategy, whether to consider fully litigating a matter or exploring resolution of the matter short of a trial.

These ECA strategies not only start the client off on the right foot when it comes to best practices in dealing with electronic data, they can also lower costs associated with processing and reviewing electronic documents in litigation by narrowing the focus of the litigation on the most relevant information.

Avoiding extra costs by focusing collection and processing of data to the most relevant documents in the litigation is the point of ECA strategies.

Managing the discovery process early in litigation with ECA strategies is one of the best ways to decrease costs and increase efficiencies in litigation management. In most cases, 90% of the client's costs are incurred in the discovery phase. Avoiding some portion of these costs by focusing collection and processing of data to the most relevant documents in the litigation is the point of ECA strategies. This is done by:

• CONSULTING with our clients, either through in-house or outside counsel, to devise a search strategy that targets the most relevant custodians and data
• ECA TOOLS to identify the relevant data and collect it in the most cost-effective way
• REDUCING the data to the most responsive review set before analysis by attorney reviewers
• PRESERVING the data and making sure the process is defensible and avoids spoliation