At the onset of the investigation in 2016, it was determined that a million or more pages of documents and other types of digital evidence would need to be analyzed for evidentiary value.
If one person were to examine one million documents, it’s quite possible it could be done in 20 years or so if that was their sole assignment. With a team working on the project together, it might be done in a couple of years.
The average person reads a book at a rate of about 10 pages in 15 minutes. Generally, the page is full of text and if the book is interesting, it could be a faster read.
In contrast, emails, contracts, scientific reports, phone logs, text messages and other material related to day-to-day operations in big government is dry reading. These communications often contain dates and times messages were sent or received, documents drafted and approved and can contain the results of water, soil, infrastructure and environmental testing.
Only after detailed review and analysis— the labor-intensive task of linking people to those interactions, documents and evidence—can the strategizing of the case begin.
To help review the documents of the Flint case, we used an e-Discovery platform that digitalizes most of the records in a format that can be indexed, keyword searched and sorted. This makes analyzing a complex case far less cumbersome.
The digital case evidence exists on a cloud based secure server that is password protected along with two-factor authentication that can be accessed from the internet or a private network. This allows the team to have the entire case file accessible in the office or in court.
In the Flint Water case, we found using an e-discovery platform very valuable managing the vast amounts of data that we had to sort out in the time constraints we were given. Using this tool along with several other investigative resources we were able to obtain a legal and ethical understanding on what went wrong with the water in Flint, Michigan.
Contact us for more information on e-Discovery.
