clarity

Antitrust/Competition Law and SIRs

Epiq has unparalleled experience responding to requests by domestic and international regulatory agencies to collect, assess, and produce highly sensitive data relating to acquisitions and mergers. These matters are invariably high-profile, fast-moving, and critical to a company’s long-term success and clients in a wide variety of industries have entrusted this most sensitive endeavor to Epiq.

Epiq works closely with corporate and outside counsel from the outset of the engagement to collect, process, review, and produce data in a defensible and cost-efficient manner. Epiq has been on the forefront of developing successful strategies with government agencies for deploying technology-assisted review (TAR) tools to dramatically reduce both the scope of data a company must provide and the cost of compliance. As corporate transactions for multinational companies are coming under increasing scrutiny by multiple countries, Epiq has the international resources to respond promptly in all jurisdictions involved, in accordance with applicable data privacy regulations.

In addition to our experienced client services (data) and consulting teams (TAR), Epiq has developed a core group of document review managers and contract lawyer reviewers who have extensive antitrust/competition document review experience.

Epiq Experience

To date, Epiq has supported over 100 U.S. Second Requests, Canadian SIRs and European Commission investigations.

Our antitrust/competition project management teams understand the urgency of our clients’ work and are committed to providing reliable, proactive, and responsive support to meet the required deadlines, and produce high-quality, defensible data. Our production operations run 24/7 and are supported by over 150 production engineers.

The Epiq international forensics team, comprised of seasoned professionals with extensive government enforcement backgrounds, can quickly deploy team members to collect data across the globe from a wide variety of data sources. They are also uniquely positioned to collect data from both structured and non-structured sources.

Epiq uses Relativity, the leading review platform, to provide counsel and reviewers the flexibility and scalability to handle complex analysis, review, and production projects, including the production of native files where permissible. Epiq has the required scale and capacity to support processing and production volumes in compressed timelines that are typical of antitrust/competition matters.

Project planning and management

Epiq has experienced teams of data, TAR, and document review professionals who work with our clients to establish a project plan that serves as the road map for the defensible collection, analysis, prioritization, review and production of their data. Epiq understands the urgency of the transaction and is committed to providing reliable, proactive and responsive support so that deadlines are met and deals close on time.

Prioritization, review, and production

Epiq strives to reduce the time and cost of antitrust/competition document reviews and production with the most effective and agency-vetted workflows. Sophisticated data analytics and document prioritization technologies substantially reduce the number of documents that require review and allow the review team to move through the data quickly, accurately and defensibly. With secure review centers on three continents, on-site capabilities, and experienced document review teams, Epiq can bring significant cost efficiencies to the process.

Why Epiq?

Epiq is frequently engaged during preliminary filing phases when critical relationships and workflows are established in advance of high volume/heavy future activities.
Epiq offers unmatched speed, scale, and security — we routinely collect from both standard and varied data sources and process, review, and produce terabytes of data globally each month.
With a track record of hundreds of successful TAR projects, Epiq has been a leader in the growing acceptance and use of TAR. Government agencies know and trust our process and people. Our data, TAR and document review professionals have up-to-date information about the latest requirements of the various agencies involved.
Epiq has extensive experience producing data to the Canada Competition Bureau (the Bureau):
- Epiq offers deep domain expertise around the Bureau’s SIR and Section 11 enforcement guidelines.
- Epiq is familiar and compliant with the Bureau’s de-duplication, processing and production requirements, e.g., indexing produced records to the applicable sections of the order/request.
- Epiq regularly participates in calls with the Bureau during which processing and production specifications are vetted and agreed upon.

By the numbers

Although the application of TAR tools has significantly reduced the amount of data that must be produced to a regulator, we are able to collect, ingest and process large amounts of data. Our processing volumes are typically 3-5 terabytes, with our largest matters topping 10 terabytes. Processing throughput capacity for a single project is about 4 terabytes per day, with average throughput of 1 terabyte per day.