Customer stories

Novelis

Novelis preserves data and saves money with OpenText. Novelis Corporation brings eDiscovery in-house to deliver on complex cases with OpenText EnCase Information Assurance (Formerly EnCase eDiscovery)

Challenges

  • Escalating service provider costs for e-discovery
  • Compliance with internal policies around collection and storage of meta data
  • Variety of ways and places people can store data

Results

  • Saved $1.5 million in service provider fees

  • Enabled compliant file storage

  • Improved team knowledge and process alignment with EnCase certification

Story

With mounting eDiscovery fees and cases in the news, the Novelis Corporation General Counsel decided to bring the eDiscovery process in-house. Service provider costs on one large case alone exceeded one million dollars, and the company wanted to gain control of these expenses. Given the budget crunch the legal department was facing, the question was, how fast could the capital spend be recouped in savings?

The most highly respected and most often mentioned solution at industry tradeshows was OpenText EnCase eDiscovery, so Novelis purchased it, along with training passports for the Novelis eDiscovery team. This enabled the team to get up to speed quickly and build a defensible, repeatable in-house process.

Susan Jackson
Legal Counsel, Novelis

In addition to escalating service provider costs for eDiscovery, internal policies required electronic data for terminated and retiring employees meeting certain management criteria be preserved with metadata unaltered during collection. The corporation’s needs demanded the law department have the best tools in the market and people knowledgeable in the legal complexities of eDiscovery.

“The most highly respected and most often mentioned solution at industry trade shows was EnCase eDiscovery, so Novelis purchased it, along with training passports for the Novelis eDiscovery team. This enabled the team to get up to speed quickly and build a defensible, repeatable in-house process,” said Susan Jackson, Legal Counsel, Novelis. As part of this process each team member received their EnCEP™ (EnCase Certified eDiscovery Practitioner) certification. The company now preserves electronic data and saves case files in accordance with their electronically stored information policy. EnCase Information Assurance is used for the acquisition of user-created information and collects from different data sources forensically.

The company can collect and preserve whole disks or target specific files and directories, as needed, while preserving metadata and audit integrity with EnCase’s trusted Logical Evidence File (LEF). If further review is warranted, either for a business purpose or in response to litigation, data is culled in OpenText™ EnCase™ Information Assurance and relevant information is exported and loaded into other eDiscovery review platforms.

In just nine months of using OpenText EnCase Information Assurance, the company has saved more than $1.5 million in service provider fees.

Susan Jackson
Legal Counsel, Novelis

“In just nine months of using EnCase Information Assurance, the company has saved more than $1.5 million in service provider fees,” Jackson noted.

EnCase Information Assurance has proven to be a good solution for the corporation, as many plaintiffs’ lawyers attempt to use eDiscovery to leverage settlements. Novelis can now focus on evaluating a case based on its merits alone, instead of being bound by the daunting costs of hiring outside counsel and third-party service providers to deal with the overbroad requests of plaintiffs’ counsel.

In the future, the eDiscovery team will continue to use EnCase eDiscovery software to its full advantage, allowing Novelis to focus less on service provider costs and more on the merits of the cases filed.

About Novelis

Novelis is the leading producer of flat-rolled aluminum products and the world’s largest recycler of aluminum, operating an integrated network of technically advanced rolling and recycling facilities across North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Visit novelis.com to learn more.