About Us
Areas of Expertise
BlackStone’s team of former litigators, certified experts, and Daubert-tested consultants provide your team with the expertise to win in a wide variety of cases and investigations.
Our clients build their value on intellectual property. We help them protect it.
- Experience in 100s of IP cases, managing every point of exposure
- Former litigators as consultants with experience in state, federal, and international jurisdictions
- Information Governance services to secure IP, streamline litigation response, and avoid unnecessary future expenses
- Certified forensic ISO 270001 lab where BlackStone investigators leverage cutting edge technology and customized scripting to resolve investigations before expenses arise
- State-of-the-art LAW PreDiscovery specializes in the data sources of the future: IoT, Cloud, mobile, wearables, and ephemeral data
Intellectual property case studies:
Case Study: BlackStone’s team was relied upon for fast turnarounds and production during the Samsung vs. Apple ‘IP Trial of the Century’. Developed collection, processing, and review techniques over new file formats from Korean data sources.
Case Study: Helped identify leakers of product information and financial data. Leakers were sophisticated IT security personnel at the company. Worked past obfuscated data exfiltration paths using cloud-based data sources and traditional investigative techniques to identify culprits.
Case Study: Coordinated and executed global eDiscovery efforts, performed data analytics across multiple languages, and normalized fragmented customer databases in preparation for production on an accelerated litigation calendar.
Preserving key ESI and establishing defensibility is the name of the game. Ensuring the value of production outweighs its costs is where we help you win.
- Harness early data analytics to make compelling proportionality arguments at the beginning of the case
- Safely engage in pre-discovery exchanges of information
- Initiate a procedure for mutually agreeing on search terms
- Defensibly limit custodians to reduce production volume
- Identify the best culling strategy for your case
- Use best practices to reduce document review costs
- Utilize predictive coding and advanced analytics to review large volumes of data without excessive document review costs and accelerated review timelines.
Antitrust case studies:
Case Study: Investigated set of employees at large online retailer whose leaks had exposed the company to an Antitrust Investigation. With rigid production specifications from the DOJ, BlackStone pinpointed relevant data and reduced the amount of data to be processed from a 6 TB collection, while satisfying the DOJ’s demands. BlackStone received feedback from DOJ office that production was highest quality they had ever seen.
Case Study: Determined scope of spoliation and recovered data using servers and tape backups for communications equipment company engaged in Antitrust lawsuit. Collected and processed over 11 TB of data for hosting and review, helping client to win case.
Access expert reviewers for the area of knowledge that each case requires.
- Review pool of 50 US based and US licensed attorneys
- Team leads with experience in performing 50 or more Hatch-Waxman document reviews
- Team members with background in chemistry, biology, pharmacy, engineering or medicine
- Familiarity with industry specific terminology and associated privilege and confidentiality issues including: NDA, ANDA, FTF, Paragraph IV, API, Pay to Delay and others
- Multi-lingual reviewers
- Library of research material on case law, drugs and active
pharmaceutical ingredients - Native Excel Redaction and TAR as standard. Predictive Coding recommended when cost/benefit is there.
Daubert-certified expert testimony supports easy authentication and defensibility of evidence.
Pharmaceutical litigation case studies:
Case Study: Orchestrated simultaneous global collections in Bangalore, India and United States for Pharma trial. Pharma experts from BlackStone delivered optimized review.
Technology: Automated redaction technology LineOut saves clients an average of 83% on redactions.
The class’s demands aren’t your demise. Discover better, prevent the class, and win the case.
- Expertise in uncovering data to block class certification
- 20+ former attorneys with experience in class action cases as consultants and reviewers
- Approach discovery smarter, cost-effectively
- ELI reports help to filter all irrelevant data and cut costs
- Fast turnarounds without sacrificing defensibility
Class action case studies:
Case Study: Assisted with discovery strategy for upholding validity of arbitration clauses in consumer class action.
Case Study: Developed strategy to cut out 95% of search term volume from broad discovery request by class, resulting in huge savings for client and assisting in case victory.
Plug the leaks and reinforce your data vessel. Over 25% of employees steal proprietary information when leaving their company.
- We help our clients take back ownership of their valuable data assets, including internal policy drafting and information governance strategies to bolster investigative efforts
- Hundreds of investigations performed for theft of customer lists, secret formulas, source code, and strategy documents
- Expedited ESI preservation and investigation reveal evidence quicker, often saving clients millions and preventing unnecessary litigation remote access
- Investigators uncover digital footprints from emails, file history, internet history, USB drives, cloud storage, and more
- All relevant devices are investigated and prevented remote access
Employee investigations case studies:
Case Study: Collected and investigated devices across five locations simultaneously due to potential involvement by in-house IT and security staff. Found electronic evidence that broke open the case within four days. Worked past obfuscated data exfiltration paths that utilized cloud-based data transfer, financial intermediaries, and off-the-grid interactions that were triangulated using GPS location.
Case Study: When one of our high-tech clients, valued at over $10 billion, was alerted to a rogue employee leaking customer information, BlackStone swiftly identified the culprit and uncovered evidence for conviction.
Case Study: Validated death threats towards client’s executive and located individual responsible, who ended up being competitor. Swift closure of investigation prevented exposure to public eye.
In the time sensitive game of eDiscovery, technology and the use of data analytics is the differentiator between winners and losers.
- Key data insights within days, not months. Allowing for the best strategic litigation choices in the early stages of a matter
- Top language-agnostic technology that analyzes all patterns, not just keywords
- Predictive Coding cuts cost and time
- We help our clients visualize data graphically to collaborate on key factors
- Powerful text analytics technology, leveraging logistic regression and NLP-based algorithms
- We triangulate analytics: Categorization, Language ID, Clustering, Email Threading, Textual near Duplicates
- Similar Document Detection, Keyword Expansion, Concept Searching, Assisted Review
- Temporal, Conceptual, and Predictive analytics across computer, cloud, and mobile data
Large-scale litigation case studies:
New York Times Article: “Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, ‘e-discovery’ software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, BlackStone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.”
Case Study: Used predictive coding to review 3,000,000 documents for under $200,000 within a month’s time for patent litigation. Review experts from BlackStone’s Silicon Valley and Salt Lake City offices collaborated to optimize the review process.
We get to the roots of the incident fast, identifying perpetrators and securing information.
- Highly experienced in security incident response cases
- Deep analysis and investigation of breach by forensic experts and review analysts
- Expertise in latest data exfiltration techniques used by APTs
- Large-scale investigative capabilities, able to analyze entire divisional departures and divestitures for data exfiltration using automated scripts and investigative matrices
- Extensive experience investigating corporate IT or Security staff. Able to track down sophisticated exfiltration methodologies while minimizing business disruption
- Investigators go beyond identification of artifacts to provide actionable intelligence with proportional documentation
- In-house, ISO 27001 certified forensic lab
Data breach case studies:
Case Study: Supported leading global law firm with data breach investigation and customer notification obligations. Identified repositories that were leaked and built a categorized-PII and contact information index to allow for notification of affected parties.
Case Study: Assisted Fortune 1000 corporation in responding to state-sponsored hacking of customer data. From crafting enterprise-wide response to managing subsequent breach notification, litigation, and establishing future information governance policy, BlackStone assisted in every step of the response.
Case Study: Assisted leading cloud-storage company with identifying sources of highly confidential information leaked to national news outlets. Reviewed over 20 potential sources during the course of the investigation and identified the leak point within 10 days.
Our Ethos
E-Discovery service providers have a notorious reputation for breaking the trust of customers and exploiting the average lawyer’s lack of familiarity with highly technical concepts. At BlackStone, our business is built on trust.
We take pride in earning and preserving the trust of our clients through:
“The BlackStone team took the time to fully understand our requirements for discovery and was able to come up with a custom solution to our needs. They have been nothing but professional and provided us with the some of the most powerful tools in the industry to get our data culling, tagging, filtering, and conversions done quickly and efficiently.”
Senior Attorney, DLA Piper
Key Team Members
Careers and community outreach.
Below are the roles we’re currently looking to fill. If you’re interested in any of the roles below please submit your resume or feel free to contact us directly.
| Available roles at BlackStone |
|---|
| Technical Analyst |
| Review Attorney |
| Senior Project Manager |
| Project Manager |
BlackStone Discovery is committed to the community and values its relationships with local organizations and businesses. BlackStone consistently contributes pro bono services to a number of local groups. Below is a partial list of the groups that BlackStone Discovery supports each year.
BlackStone Discovery has found it a pleasure to be continually involved in the local community in the following ways.
Sponsor of the 2012 Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat
Sponsor of the 2012 CLSEPA Annual Celebration Gala
Sponsor of the 2011 California Alliance of Paralegal Association in San Francisco
Founding sponsor of the 2011 Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat in Carmel
Sponsor of the 2009 Women in E Discovery Event held at Goodwin Proctor in San Francisco
Sponsor of the 20th Annual PAABA Golf Tournament
Yearly co-sponsor of the Howrey baseball team
Host of free informative seminars for our clients, where we make our team available as a resource for e-discovery trends and industry knowledge
