eDiscovery

Since the advent of email and the pervasive growth of other unstructured data in the corporate environment, litigation and non-litigation discovery has evolved to be a costly and high-risk endeavor. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing discovery have provided some guidance about how companies must respond to discovery requests, but most companies still lack an organized business process for managing the costs, risks and cycle time challenges of eDiscovery. The Knott Group is expert in guiding companies – pharmaceutical, diverse manufacturing, financial services, retail, high-tech and energy – to meet this challenge. We assess current people, processes and technologies utilized for discovery response, identify gaps between current practices and proven ones, and formulate tailored and focused Discovery Response Plans to lower cost, mitigate risk and improve response times.

Litigation

Litigation is a legal business process that is too often treated as a “fire-fight”. Too little attention is paid to documenting and leveraging best practices across different litigation portfolios, developing meaningful metrics and management controls to inform cost and risk decision-making, and documenting practices as a means to create consistency and favorable outcomes. The Knott Group has assisted numerous corporations in bringing process discipline into litigation management, resulting in more efficient and effective use of outside counsel, a greater ability to manage costs, and an increase in in-house counsel’s ability to focus on the substantive issues of law vs. process administration.

Information Governance & Records Management

Information, both electronic and paper-based, is created, accessed, transported, stored, managed and destroyed as part of the lifecycle of Information Governance and Records Management. However, most companies have been unable to install a repeatable process for Information Governance and Records Management, especially given the exponential proliferation of electronically stored information in recent years. As a result, downstream processes such as legal and compliance-driven discovery are fraught with risk and extremely costly. The Knott Group works with our corporate clients to put in place formal policies, processes and procedures for Information Governance and Records Management, including defensible protocols for the compliant disposition of data.

Commercial Contracting

Contracting with third parties for a multitude of purposes is a foundational element of the operation of any company. Despite this, it is the rare company that has articulated and executed a commercial contract administration and management business process that includes the people, processes and technologies needed to fully meet contractual obligations, reduce contract management expenses, and allow for efficient and effective contract administration. As experts in the commercial contracting business process, we utilize our proven assessment methodology to help our clients identify, navigate and resolve the sometimes competing demands of internal stakeholders and determine opportunities for significant risk and cost mitigation.

Merger & Acquisition Integration

Mergers and Acquisitions are becoming ever more commonplace in many industries, including pharmaceutical, life sciences, and telecommunications. The ultimate success of any merger or acquisition rests principally on the company’s ability to succeed at post-transaction integration, including the integration of legal business processes such as litigation and information governance. Through our work with many merging companies, The Knott Group has applied our specialized expertise in addressing this challenge. We utilize a blend of our corporate finance, strategy and business consulting experience and our legal and information technology expertise to ensure that legal business processes and the associated workflows and technologies are seamlessly integrated and merger and acquisition synergies are fully realized.

IP Portfolio Management

The absence of a holistic approach to managing a company’s intellectual property portfolio is most evident when a company is facing litigation that puts these critical assets at risk. The Knott Group takes a proactive approach to assessing the gaps in a company’s management of its intellectual property portfolio, including the Information Risk Management approaches taken to support proper defense of intellectual property assets.

Industries served

The Knott Group works with companies across a broad range of industries, including pharmaceutical, diverse manufacturing, retail, energy, healthcare, financial services, technology, and telecommunications. 



Industry Perspective

The pharmaceutical industry faces unprecedented pressure from constantly shrinking product pipelines, aggressive generic pharmaceutical manufacturers filing Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) that threatens revenue streams, and an evolving legislative environment surrounding payers and providers. The corporate legal department is a key stakeholder in addressing these challenges to operational efficiency and enterprise risk management, particularly when combined with the complexities created by the merger and acquisition activity they spur. The Knott Group is engaged with our brand pharmaceutical clients to reshape the overall management of the legal function to enable metrics-driven, holistic integration and execution of legal business processes, and in assessing and improving individual legal business processes such as M&A integration, eDiscovery, records management, commercial contracting and IP portfolio management.