Built Before
the Subpoena Arrives.
When litigation, regulatory inquiry, or internal investigation hits, organizations without a plan lose the first sixty to ninety days reconstructing what they should already have documented — while evidence is being overwritten and opposing counsel is building leverage. Litigation Readiness is the discipline of having that plan in place before you need it.
The first sixty days of every unprepared matter look identical.
A complaint arrives, a regulator opens an inquiry, or an HR matter escalates. The clock starts. Counsel asks IT for custodian data. IT asks who the custodians are. Legal asks where the data lives. No one has a current ESI data map. Standard retention policies have already overwritten the artifacts that matter. The legal hold goes out late and incomplete. By the time discovery begins in earnest, the evidentiary record has degraded, scope is contested, and the matter has cost more than it should have — before anyone has read a single document.
The unprepared get punished by the calendar, by opposing counsel, and by the bench. Sanctions for spoliation. Adverse inferences. Cost-shifting orders. Production deficiencies that color how a jury later perceives the entire defense.
None of this is necessary. The work that prevents it is straightforward, well-understood, and can be put in place in weeks — if you start before the matter, not after.
A repeatable, defensible plan for responding to lawsuits, regulatory inquiries, and internal investigations.
Three pillars, designed to work together. Each pillar is independently assessable, independently improvable, and independently testable through tabletop exercises before the real matter arrives.
People
Defined roles and decision rights across legal, IT, HR, compliance, and outside counsel. Named escalation paths. Trained custodian liaisons. Clear authority for who issues holds, who scopes collections, who authorizes deviations.
Process
Documented playbooks for the matter types you're most likely to face. Legal hold procedures, preservation protocols, custodian interviews, collection workflows, ESI protocol templates, and production conventions — all ready to deploy on day one of any new matter.
Technology
An ESI data map kept current. Validated collection tooling. Hosted-review infrastructure available or pre-negotiated. Retention policies aligned with preservation obligations. Audit logs configured before you need them.
Where most organizations sit — and where they need to be.
Reactive
No plan. Every matter is a fire drill. Roles unclear, processes undocumented, evidence at risk.
Ad Hoc
Some procedures exist informally. Veteran staff know what to do, but knowledge isn't captured. Single point of failure.
Documented
Playbooks exist. SOPs are written. Legal hold templates are ready. People know where to find them.
Tested
Playbooks have been exercised through tabletop drills and applied in real matters. Gaps identified and closed. Vendors pre-vetted.
Resilient
Continuous improvement. Annual refresh cycle. Post-matter retrospectives feed back into the playbook. New matter types are added as the threat landscape evolves.
Most mid-market organizations operate at Tier 1 or 2. Most enterprises at Tier 2 or 3. Few reach Tier 4 without intentional investment. Our work is moving you up the model in a defensible, documented sequence.
What we deliver in a Readiness engagement.
Scope is modular. Most engagements combine three to six of the components below. Outcomes are tangible documents, validated workflows, and operational changes you can point to in a 26(f) conference or to a regulator.
Readiness Assessment
Structured evaluation of current state against the maturity model. Identifies gaps in people, process, and technology. Delivered as a scorecard plus a prioritized remediation roadmap.
Information Governance & ESI Data Mapping
Inventory of every system where discoverable data resides — endpoints, file shares, email, cloud platforms, chat, mobile, third-party SaaS. Mapped to custodians, retention rules, and access controls.
Legal Hold Playbook
Templates, distribution lists, acknowledgment workflows, custodian interview scripts, periodic reminder cadences, and release procedures. Built to withstand later scrutiny on scope and timing.
Preservation & Collection Protocols
Documented procedures for forensically defensible preservation across each data source in your environment. Vendor-agnostic. Aligned to the validated methodologies we use in court-tested forensic work.
eDiscovery Program Design
Technology stack evaluation, vendor selection criteria, hosted-review platform readiness, ESI protocol templates, production conventions. Includes financial modeling for in-source vs. outsource decisions.
Mock Litigation & Tabletop Exercises
Practice the playbook before the real matter arrives. We design realistic scenarios — departed-employee IP theft, regulatory inquiry, internal misconduct — and run the team through the response, end to end.
Training
Targeted training for in-house counsel, IT custodian liaisons, HR investigators, and outside-counsel liaisons. Calibrated to the audience — legal teams get the procedural angle; IT teams get the technical workflows.
Annual Refresh & Advisory
Readiness degrades. Systems change, people leave, the threat landscape evolves. Ongoing advisory engagements keep the program current and incorporate lessons from each matter into the next.
Three engagement models, calibrated to where you are.
Readiness Diagnostic
One week. We assess current state against the maturity model, interview key stakeholders, examine existing documentation, and deliver a scorecard plus a prioritized 90-day roadmap. Best for organizations that need to know where they stand before committing to a larger build.
Playbook Build
Implementation engagement. We design, document, and validate the people-process-technology framework end-to-end. Output is a working playbook — not a binder that sits on a shelf. Includes a tabletop exercise to pressure-test the deliverable.
Ongoing Advisory
Annual retainer. Quarterly check-ins, post-matter retrospectives, refresh of the playbook, training cycles for new staff, advisory on emerging data sources. For organizations that treat readiness as an operational discipline rather than a one-time project.
Validated, recognized, defensible.
- Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) — the industry-standard lifecycle for eDiscovery preparedness through production
- Sedona Conference Principles — particularly around preservation, proportionality, and ESI protocols
- Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26 and 37 — with attention to recent amendments on proportionality and preservation
- Relativity Litigation Readiness Framework — for organizations using or considering Relativity-anchored eDiscovery infrastructure
- NIST SP 800-86 — for the forensic preservation components
- ISO/IEC 27050 — international standard for electronic discovery
- Cross-border frameworks — GDPR (EU), CCPA/CPRA (California), and equivalent state and international privacy regimes
Find out where your organization sits on the readiness curve.
A Readiness Diagnostic takes a week and produces a scorecard plus a prioritized roadmap. No long-term commitment required.