A U.S. House Committee has requested a myriad of documents from social media companies related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. But an initial two-week window may turn into more of a revolving door of documents.  Martin Tully comments on the effects of a short production timeline and what that means for engaging outside support in this Legaltech News article by Frank Ready.

Not everybody will be enjoying a relaxing Labor Day weekend. Last week, the U.S. House of Representative’s Select Committee in charge of investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection gave social media companies two weeks to produce a broad spectrum of records related to the 2020 election and the ensuing attack on the U.S. Capitol.  

For some of the bigger tech companies on that list—names like Twitter, Facebook and Google—producing the volumes of data, reports, internal analyses and communications that investigators are looking to obtain is more of a question of “when” than “if.” Just don’t expect “when” to fall within the two-week deadline. 

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The process of engaging outside support raises its own obstacles, not the least of which is finding a trusted partner to help manage any number of sensitive data points. Martin Tully, a partner at Redgrave, believes that a short production timeline often forces companies to fall back on providers they’ve worked with in the past. 

If you’ve got to come up with 150 to 250 reviewers in a matter of days, plus put together a protocol around what they are going to be doing, you want to work with someone that you already know they can do that. Plus you know their workflows and you already know how they approach challenges like this,” he said.

Money is also an object. Tully opined that social media companies looking to throw additional manpower behind their productions could engage a provider that is strictly focused on pure document review, or an alternate legal service provider (ALSP) that offers both the human expertise around managing e-discovery workflows and cutting edge search and review analytics technology.

They’ve got the tools, plus they’ve got the people. But those are usually a little bit more expensive, though,” he said.  

Read the full Legaltech News article here