Deloitte Opens Legal Discovery Center

Deloitte Financial Advisory Services has launched a new Electronic Discovery Solutions Center in the Nashville area to help with the evidence collection process for legal proceedings.

The center is intended to help clients avoid the hefty fines that can be levied if they don't respond to legal discovery requests in a timely manner. The center will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and will have access to Deloitte employees from around the world who can speak various languages and translate reams of documents.

"Today, clients may require multiple terabytes of data to be collected, processed and stored," said Deloitte FAS director Bruce Hartley in a statement. "For example, a single case may require us to analyze electronic data that - if printed out in stacks of pages - could reach as high as three Sears Towers in one month. Tomorrow, that amount could double or triple."

The team staffing the center will include former government prosecutors, intelligence community members, computer science and forensic specialists, and high-tech engineers. They will use software to collect, process and sift through data to identify files such as PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, instant message logs, smartphone logs, and even voice and video files to support client cases.

The Deloitte Electronic Discovery Solutions Center will employ approximately 100 professionals in suburban Nashville. Professionals and labs in several other Deloitte offices in the U.S. will be working with them. The center will also have access to analytic and forensic technology professionals and labs at Deloitte member firms and affiliates around the world.

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