US 8,275,720 B2Granted

External scoping sources to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorsNazrul Islam, Deidre Paknad, Pierre Raynaud-Richard

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Abstract

When creating exhaustive, affected lists within a request scope, any legal risk due to failure to identify or leverage existing knowledge of a company about custody of evidence related to a legal matter is minimized. Accurate affected lists are constructed for an ongoing or impending litigation. Affected people, systems, or record types are included at first, and the list is modified over time once their exact association to the litigation context is clarified (new ones are added, not required are removed). Automation of data capture eliminates the risk of human error during data entry. Conflict resolution is applied when the same person, system, or record type is identified in the request scope, as part of multiple affiliations and associations. Overlapping lists are automatically merged to enable simple and efficient processing, without having to cull different lists. Affected elements in the request scope that could otherwise be missed are tracked and added. A relevant list of all affected elements based on multiple likely inconsistent sources of knowledge dispersed throughout a company is created, with a high degree of confidence in the context of an ongoing litigation or an impending litigation.

Claims42

Dependent claims

A computer implemented method for external scoping of sources of information to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters, comprising the steps of:

managing a list of external sources that are able to provide at least one list of affected elements that contain or have custody of evidence in legal matters, the external sources comprising sources external to a litigation management system, and the affected elements comprising people, systems, and classes of information in the legal matters, based upon specific legal matter parameters;
providing a communication protocol including one or more external datasource adapters to enable import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources into the litigation management system;
providing a user interface operable on a computer and configured to enable triggering or executing of the import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources using the communication protocol, wherein the user interface is further operable to enable selection of one or more affected elements in the at least one list of affected elements for import from the external sources into the litigation management system;
resolving, by the computer, conflicts between different lists of affected elements that are imported in a same request scope, wherein the conflicts arise if the different lists of affected elements identify a same affected element in the same request scope as part of differing affiliations and associations;
resolving, by the computer, conflicts between different lists of affected elements from a same external source which are imported at different points in time;
and
tracking, displaying, and reporting the external sources with regard to where in the external sources each element in the list of affected elements originated, modifications that occurred after an initial import, and all reasons provided by an operator via the user interface or an external source to justify an initial import or follow-up changes.

4 more elements

An apparatus for external scoping of sources of information to determine affected people, systems, and classes of information in legal matters, comprising:

a computer;
a mechanism operable on the computer and configured to manage a list of external sources that are able to provide at least one list of affected elements that contain or have custody of evidence in legal matters, the affected elements comprising people, systems, and classes of information in the legal matters, based upon specific legal matter parameters;
a communication protocol that includes one or more external datasource adapters, wherein the communication protocol is operable on the computer and is configured to enable import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources;
a user interface operable on the computer and configured to trigger or execute the import of the at least one list of affected elements from the external sources using the communication protocol;
an application operable on the computer and configured to resolve conflicts between different lists of affected elements that are imported in a same request scope, wherein the conflicts arise if the different lists of affected elements identify a same affected element in the same request scope as part of differing affiliations and associations, and further configured to resolve conflicts between different lists of affected elements from a same external source which are imported at different points in time;
and
an events engine operable on the computer and configured to track, display, and report the external sources with regard to where each element in the list of affected elements originated, modifications that occurred after an initial import, and all reasons provided by an operator via the user interface or an external source to justify an initial import or follow-up changes.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.