Turnkey remediation of inadequate disclosure exercise

The challenge: 

CCL was engaged by a large agency that had previously examined over 50 computer exhibits in a fraud case and produced a significant volume of material as evidence.

However, in preparation for the trial it was deemed by disclosure counsel that there had not been a consistent approach to the examination of the exhibits for material that could assist the defence or undermine the case for the prosecution. There was a risk they would not be able to demonstrate how the case satisfied their disclosure obligations under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act.

Therefore, there was no option but to re-examine the computers, with the trial due to start in just four months.

Overcoming the challenge:

‍A case conference was held at CCL with the senior investigating officer, CPS and disclosure counsel to discuss how new technologies could be used to help the organisation solve this problem.

CCL subsequently developed a solution based around Nuix software, to ingest the forensic images (copies) of the computer exhibits, including processing of deleted files, to search and filter the contents for keywords and date ranges, agreed with the defence, and to facilitate their review.

The search identified over 250,000 e-mails, documents and spreadsheets for review. So, CCL deployed a Nuix review suite consisting of a server and four terminals to their offices, empowering the reviewers to identify and record privileged and disclosable documents. Additional training was also delivered.

The result::: 

The reviewers were each able to review up to 3,000 documents a day, completing the exercise several weeks before the trial.

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