External scoping sources to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters

• US 8,275,720 B2
• Filed: 06/12/2008
• Issued: 09/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Paknad, Deidre, Raynaud-Richard, Pierre, Islam, Nazrul
• Primary Examiner(s): Casler, Traci
• Application Number:
  US12/138,326
• Publication Number:
  US 20090313196A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,566 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 705/311
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

When creating exhaustive, affected lists within a request scope, any legal risk due to failure to identify or leverage existing knowledge of a company about custody of evidence related to a legal matter is minimized. Accurate affected lists are constructed for an ongoing or impending litigation. Affected people, systems, or record types are included at first, and the list is modified over time once their exact association to the litigation context is clarified (new ones are added, not required are removed). Automation of data capture eliminates the risk of human error during data entry. Conflict resolution is applied when the same person, system, or record type is identified in the request scope, as part of multiple affiliations and associations. Overlapping lists are automatically merged to enable simple and efficient processing, without having to cull different lists. Affected elements in the request scope that could otherwise be missed are tracked and added. A relevant list of all affected elements based on multiple likely inconsistent sources of knowledge dispersed throughout a company is created, with a high degree of confidence in the context of an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for external scoping of sources of information to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters, comprising the steps of:

managing a list of external sources that are able to provide at least one list of affected elements that contain or have custody of evidence in legal matters, the external sources comprising sources external to a litigation management system, and the affected elements comprising people, systems, and classes of information in the legal matters, based upon specific legal matter parameters;

providing a communication protocol including one or more external datasource adapters to enable import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources into the litigation management system;

providing a user interface operable on a computer and configured to enable triggering or executing of the import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources using the communication protocol, wherein the user interface is further operable to enable selection of one or more affected elements in the at least one list of affected elements for import from the external sources into the litigation management system;

resolving, by the computer, conflicts between different lists of affected elements that are imported in a same request scope, wherein the conflicts arise if the different lists of affected elements identify a same affected element in the same request scope as part of differing affiliations and associations;

resolving, by the computer, conflicts between different lists of affected elements from a same external source which are imported at different points in time; and

tracking, displaying, and reporting the external sources with regard to where in the external sources each element in the list of affected elements originated, modifications that occurred after an initial import, and all reasons provided by an operator via the user interface or an external source to justify an initial import or follow-up changes.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the affected elements in the list of affected elements for the external sources comprise one or more of:

persons who are not part of the enterprise;

hosted systems or repositories that are not managed and maintained within a company;

persons, systems, and classes of information that were jointly involved in a same project, where a project describes any temporary association of persons from one or multiple organizations, using specific systems to store information in the form of a specific set of information classes, as used in a specific context of the project;

persons catalogs in LDAP, Active Directory, and other IT data stores of person information;

persons catalogs from HR systems, financial systems, and other information systems that maintain employee information via Web services calls/APIs;

persons lists defined based on an access list of structured applications via application specific APIs;

persons from mail servers; and

isolated partial lists of persons, systems, and classes of information.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the isolated partial lists of data sources comprise:

one or more systems that are dynamically provisioned in a company.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a tracking and conflict resolution for use in enterprises in which a large amount of data may not yet be classified or tracked in a central retention management program;

wherein as identification of potential evidence progresses, a specific silo of unclassified data is investigated and classified; and

wherein at this point relevant classes of information become immediately known and are imported into a request scope.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

importing relevant classes of information, comprising;

performing a CSV import of record types into the request scope;

managing association of the record types with external data sources imported; and

including the external data sources into the request scope when external record types are included.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein managing the list of external sources further comprises:

integrating with LDAP, where a list of sources of affected elements is described as LDAP server details, including hostname, port number, and security credentials;

managing Web service URLs as a source of affected elements; and

managing connector configuration URLs for connector type integration, where a connector provides a range of services that can be discovered through a single configuration service.

7. The method of claim 1, the providing a communication protocol further comprises:

exporting a list from systems that have affected element related information to a file;

wherein the file is either formatted to an CSV format or the list is exported in an CSV format itself; and

wherein the list of elements is imported into a request scope of an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

providing an LDAP browser-like interface to search for people details and import a list via LDAP protocol integration;

implementing a Web services client and importing a list of affected elements returned for external sources that expose Web services interfaces; and

implementing integration glue code for external sources exposing other non-standard interfaces that bridge between standard Web services APIs and native source side service provider APIs to extract and import the list of affected elements.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user interface further comprises:

providing the user interface to import the at least one affected list through CSV files;

wherein an element type comprises a person, system, or record type;

wherein a file to import is selected from the file system;

wherein a preview of an imported list is provided;

wherein a legal team can then decide which items in the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user interface further comprises:

providing the user interface to import the at least one affected list using a mailing list lookup;

wherein a preview of the imported list is provided;

wherein the legal team can then decide which items on the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user interface further comprises:

providing the user interface to import the at least one affected list using a Web service lookup;

wherein a list of Web services that are available for access in context of litigation is provided;

wherein a list of some (or all) known standard parameters on the litigation context are provided as input parameters to the Web services, so the Web services can decide to use them as filter as appropriate;

wherein a preview of the imported list is provided;

wherein the legal team can then decide which items on the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user interface further comprises:

providing the user interface to import the at least one affected list using a Web service based lookup via connectors;

wherein a list of some (or all) known standard parameters on the litigation context are provided as input parameters to the Web services, so the Web services can decide to use them as filter as appropriate;

wherein the connectors provide additional filters, defined per connector, that allow an end user to refine a selection further before importing the affected list;

wherein a selection may be made from a list of connectors that are configured with eternal sources of information on affected people, systems, and record types that are accessible in the context of litigation;

optionally executing a continuous mode for certain systems, where the affected list source systems regularly provide any update to lists that being imported;

wherein if the mode is continuous, then search results and a selection area are not shown;

wherein the search criteria are stored in the continuous mode;

wherein conflict resolution is automatically performed based on configured rules;

wherein a filter area provides query templates to use for search based upon connector configuration;

wherein criteria are saved if the system is in the continuous mode; and

wherein a user can refine the filter criteria.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user interface further comprises:

providing the user interface to import the at least one affected list using an LDAP lookup;

wherein a configured list of LDAP servers that are accessible in the context of litigation is shown;

wherein if a mode is continuous, then search results and selection area are not shown;

wherein search criteria are stored in the continuous mode;

wherein conflict resolution is automatically performed based on configured rules;

wherein a filter area provides query templates to use for search based upon connector configuration;

wherein criteria are saved if the system is in the continuous mode; and

wherein a user can refine the filter criteria.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

adding an additional user interface to setup automatic refresh of an affected list lookup by configuring parameters, the parameters specifying one or more of a start date, a refresh period, and an end date.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein once the parameters are configured, the method further comprises:

refreshing a corresponding affected elements lookup source using pre-configured parameters on the start date until the end date is reached; and

automatically refreshing the affected list as appropriate.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

implementing conflict resolution between different lists of affected elements imported in a request scope by any one or more of the following;

keeping a union of all elements, always adding external elements and combinations of similar rules driven by a rules engine;

initially, keeping the union of all elements, but triggering workflows to resolve conflicts based on configured rule sets;

triggering workflows before external elements are included into the request scope, wherein imported elements stay in a pending state and are added to the request scope only when approved, and wherein elements are added only after completion of the workflow;

keeping the union of all elements, but allowing manual override and tracking where inclusion, modification, or deletion of elements from external sources happened; and

keeping the union of all elements, and tracking external sources when the same element came from multiple sources.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing conflict resolution between different lists of affected elements, where the same external source is imported at different point in time; and

using a reference count to keep track of which source added which elements, and removing elements that are no longer included in any of their original sources of affected elements.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a mechanism for tracking, displaying, and reporting on a change history of affected elements comprising;

affected people details to be captured from external sources, including any of last name, first name, email, loginId, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, matterid, and request scope id;

affected system details to be captured from external sources, including any of name, unique IDentifier, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, list of record types, list of people, matterid, and request scope id; and

record type list details to be captured from external sources, including any of record type, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, matterid, and request scope id.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a people master list comprising a union of affected individuals across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein individuals can be included because of explicit inclusion and individuals can be included because of their association with systems; and

wherein the master list also indicates which follow-up actions have already been taken regarding an affected individual by any of sending a legal hold, setting a preservation plan, setting and fulfilling collections, and interviewing the individual.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a system master list comprising a union of affected systems across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein systems can be included because of explicit inclusion and can be included because of their association with record types;

wherein the master list also indicates which follow-up actions have already been taken regarding an affected system by any of setting a preservation plan, setting and fulfilling collections, and interviewing a system steward.

20. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a record type master list comprising a union of affected record types across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein the record type list can be included because of explicit inclusion; and

wherein the record type list can also be included because of an association with systems.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking, displaying, and reporting the external sources further comprises:

reporting one or more of;

a list of external request scopes per matter, across selected matters;

an external request scope with any of the following details;

matter ID;

request scope ID;

external element reference with drill down to details, including affected people details, affected system details, and affected record type details; and

affected element details that may include a history of changes, and reasons for inclusion, including which source of affected elements they were referred from, and when; and

filter criteria, including any of matter ID;

selected time duration; and

element type.

22. An apparatus for external scoping of sources of information to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters, comprising:

a computer;

a mechanism operable on the computer and configured to manage a list of external sources that are able to provide at least one list of affected elements that contain or have custody of evidence in legal matters, the affected elements comprising people, systems, and classes of information in the legal matters, based upon specific legal matter parameters;

a communication protocol that includes one or more external datasource adapters, wherein the communication protocol is operable on the computer and is configured to enable import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources;

a user interface operable on the computer and configured to trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources using the communication protocol;

an application operable on the computer and configured to resolve conflicts between different lists of affected elements that are imported in a same request scope, wherein the conflicts arise if the different lists of affected elements identify a same affected element in the same request scope as part of differing affiliations and associations, and further configured to resolve conflicts between different lists of affected elements from a same external source which are imported at different points in time; and

an events engine operable on the computer and configured to track, display, and report the external sources with regard to where each element in the list of affected elements originated, modifications that occurred after an initial import, and all reasons provided by an operator via the user interface or an external source to justify an initial import or follow-up changes.

23. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the elements in the list of affected elements for the external sources comprise any of:

individuals who are not part of the enterprise, hosted systems or repositories that are not managed and maintained within a company;

individuals, systems, and classes of information that were jointly involved in the same project, where a project describes any temporary association of individuals from one or multiple organizations, using specific systems to store information in the form of a specific set of information classes, as used in a specific context of the project;

individuals catalogs in LDAP, Active Directory, and other IT data stores of individuals information;

individuals catalogs from HR systems, financial systems, and other information systems that maintain employee information via Web services calls/APIs;

individuals lists defined based on an access list of structured applications via application specific APIs;

individuals from mail servers; and

isolated partial lists of data sources.

24. The apparatus of claim 23, wherein the isolated partial lists of data sources comprise:

one or more systems that are dynamically provisioned in a company.

25. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a tracking and conflict resolution mechanism configured for use in enterprises in which a large amount of data may not yet be classified or tracked in a central retention management program;

wherein as identification of potential evidence progresses, a specific silo of unclassified data is investigated and classified; and

wherein at this point relevant classes of information become known and are immediately imported into a request scope.

26. The apparatus of claim 25, wherein the relevant classes of information are imported by mechanisms configured to:

perform a CSV import of record types into the request scope;

manage association of the record types with external data sources imported; and

include the external data sources into the request scope when external record types are included.

27. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the mechanism operable on the computer and configured to manage a list of external sources is further configured to:

integrate with LDAP, where a list of sources of affected elements is described as LDAP server details, including hostname, port number, and security credentials;

manage Web service URLs as a source of affected elements; and

manage connector configuration URLs for connector type integration, where a connector provides a range of services that can be discovered through a single configuration service.

28. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the communication protocol is further configured to:

export a list from systems that have affected element related information to a file;

wherein the file is either formatted to an CSV format or the list is exported in an CSV format itself; and

wherein the list of elements is imported into a request scope of an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

provide an LDAP browser-like interface to search for people details and import a list via LDAP protocol integration;

implement a Web services client and importing a list of affected elements returned for external sources that expose Web services interfaces; and

implement integration glue code for external sources exposing other non-standard interfaces that bridge between standard Web services APIs and native source side service provider APIs to extract and import the list of affected elements.

29. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the user interface is further configured to:

trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements through CSV files;

wherein an element type comprises a person, system, or record type;

wherein a file to import is selected from the file system;

wherein a preview of an imported list is provided;

wherein a legal team can then decide which items in the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

30. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the user interface is further configured to:

trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements using a mailing list lookup;

wherein a preview of an imported list is provided;

wherein the legal team can then decide which items on the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

31. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the user interface is further configured to:

trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements using a Web service lookup;

wherein a list of Web services that are available for access in context of litigation is provided;

wherein a list of known standard parameters on the litigation context are provided as input parameters to the Web services, so it can decide to use them as filter as appropriate;

wherein a preview of an imported list is provided;

wherein the legal team can then decide which items on the imported list are to be included in the request scope; and

wherein the decision can optionally be deferred until all elements are imported.

32. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the user interface is further configured to:

trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements using a Web service based lookup via connectors;

wherein a list of some (or all) known standard parameters on the litigation context are provided as input parameters to the Web services, so it can decide to use them as filter as appropriate;

wherein the connectors provide additional filters, defined per connector, that allow an end user to refine a selection further before importing the at least one list of affected elements;

wherein a selection may be made from a list of connectors that are configured with eternal sources of information on affected people, systems, and record types that are accessible in the context of litigation;

execute a continuous mode for certain systems, where the affected list source systems regularly provide any update to lists that being imported;

wherein if the mode is continuous, then search results and a selection area are not shown;

wherein the search criteria are stored in the continuous mode;

wherein conflict resolution is automatically performed based on configured rules;

wherein a filter area provides query templates to use for search based upon connector configuration;

wherein criteria are saved if the system is in the continuous mode; and

wherein a user can refine the filter criteria.

33. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the user interface is further configured to:

trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements using an LDAP lookup;

wherein a configured list of LDAP servers that are accessible in the context of litigation is shown;

wherein if a mode is continuous, then search results and selection area are not shown;

wherein search criteria are stored in the continuous mode;

wherein conflict resolution is automatically performed based on configured rules;

wherein a filter area provides query templates to use for search based upon connector configuration;

wherein criteria are saved if the system is in the continuous mode; and

wherein a user can refine the filter criteria.

34. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a mechanism configured to add an additional user interface to setup automatic refresh of an affected list lookup by configuring parameters that comprise a start date allowing a user to select a date, defaulting to today;

a refresh period expressed in any of days, weeks, and months; and

an end date, which can be empty, which indicates refresh indefinitely.

35. The apparatus of claim 34, wherein:

once the parameters are configured, a corresponding affected elements lookup source is refreshed using pre-configured parameters on the start date until the end date; and

the affected list is automatically refreshed as appropriate.

36. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising mechanisms configured to:

implement conflict resolution between different affected lists imported in a request scope by providing means for executing any of the following steps;

keep a union of all elements, always adding external elements and combinations of similar rules driven by a rules engine;

initially, keep the union of all elements, but triggering workflows to resolve conflicts based on configured rule sets;

trigger workflows before external elements are included into the request scope, wherein imported elements stay in a pending state and are added to the request scope only when approved, and wherein elements are added only after completion of the workflow;

keep the union of all elements, but allowing manual override and tracking where inclusion, modification, or deletion of elements from external sources happened; and

keep the union of all elements, and tracking external sources when a same element came from multiple sources.

37. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

mechanisms configured to perform conflict resolution between different affected lists, where a same external source is imported at different point in time; and

mechanisms configured to use a reference count to keep track of which source added which elements, and removing elements that are no longer included in any of their original sources of affected elements.

38. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a mechanism configured to provide a mechanism for tracking, displaying, and reporting on a change history of each element, comprising mechanisms configured to;

capture affected people from external sources, including one or more of last name, first name, email, loginId, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, matterid, and request scope id;

capture affected system details from external sources, including any of name, unique IDentifier, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, list of record types, list of people, matterid, and request scope id; and

capture record type list details from external sources, including any of record type, date of inclusion, date of modification, reason, matterid, and request scope id.

39. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a mechanism configured to provide a people master list comprising a union of affected people across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein people are be included because of explicit inclusion and people can be included because of their association with systems; and

wherein the master list also indicates which follow-up actions have already been taken regarding an affected person by any of sending a legal hold, setting a preservation plan, setting and fulfilling collections, and interviewing the person.

40. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a mechanism configured to provide a system master list comprising a union of affected systems across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein systems can be included because of explicit inclusion and can be included because of their association with record types;

wherein the master list also indicates which follow-up actions have already been taken regarding an affected system by any of setting a preservation plan, setting and fulfilling collections, and interviewing a system steward.

41. The apparatus of claim 22, further comprising:

a mechanism configured to provide a record type master list comprising a union of affected record types across all request scopes associated with an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation context;

wherein the record type list can be included because of explicit inclusion; and

wherein the record type list can also be included because of an association with systems.

42. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the events engine comprises mechanisms configured to report one or more of:

a list of external request scopes per litigation context, across selected litigation contexts;

an external request scope with any of the following details;

litigation context Identifier;

request scope Identifier;

external element reference with drill down to details, including affected people details, affected system details, and affected record type details; and

affected element details that may include a history of changes, and reasons for inclusion, including which source of affected elements they were referred from, and when; and

filter criteria, including any of litigation context identifier;

selected time duration; and

element type.