Rapid Email Review Across 200GB of PST Data in an Arbitration Matter
Facing 200GB of PST data and a compressed arbitration deadline, our team designed and applied structured keyword criteria across the full collection — enabling the legal team to focus their review on the communications that mattered before the procedural deadline closed.
A large PST collection, a compressed timetable, and highly technical subject matter
Legal teams in an ongoing arbitration received several large Outlook PST files shortly before critical procedural deadlines. The matter involved highly technical subject matter — structural steel supervision, QA/QC processes, material specifications, and site deliverables — and the relevant communications were scattered across a large and fragmented email collection.
A general keyword search would have produced an unmanageable review set. An overly narrow search would have missed relevant material. The legal team needed a methodology that was both practically workable and defensible — designed by someone who understood both the technical terminology and the arbitration context.
Designing the search — not just running it
The critical contribution was not processing the PST files. It was designing a keyword strategy that reflected how engineers and supervisors actually wrote about these issues — the abbreviations used in the field, the terminology specific to the materials in dispute, the way QA/QC responsibilities were referred to in contemporaneous correspondence.
We structured the search criteria by issue category — supervision, QA/QC, deliverables, technical specifications — and built the review environment so that the legal team could prioritise by theme rather than working through an undifferentiated results list. That distinction determined whether the review was possible within the timetable at all.
From PST archive to structured review
- Assessed the PST collections and identified the scope of custodians, date ranges, and attachment types requiring review
- Worked with the legal team to understand the technical issues in dispute and the terminology that would be relevant
- Designed structured keyword criteria by issue category, including technical variants and field abbreviations
- Indexed the full collection and applied the criteria, tagging results by dispute theme
- Delivered a prioritised review set enabling the legal team to focus effort before the deadline
Legal review completed — within the arbitration timetable
The legal team were able to complete their review of the relevant communications before the procedural deadline. The structured approach meant they could focus on the custodians, topics, and time periods that mattered — rather than managing an unstructured archive under severe time pressure.
The search methodology was repeatable and documented, meaning it could be explained and defended if the approach to disclosure was later challenged in the arbitration.
In high-pressure eDiscovery, the search design is the work. Getting it wrong means missing relevant material or drowning the review team in noise. Getting it right is what made the deadline achievable.