A federal court appointed Law & Forensics as neutral special master to untangle a years-long eDiscovery dispute — restoring proportionality, resolving privilege fights, and putting the case back on a trial schedule.
The situation
A multidistrict products-liability matter involving a global aerospace manufacturer had ground to a halt over discovery. After nearly two years, the parties were litigating one another's conduct rather than the merits: cross-allegations of spoliation, irreconcilable positions on search-term and technology-assisted-review protocols spanning more than 30 custodians, and a privilege log that one side attacked as facially deficient. Each dispute generated its own motion, and the cumulative delay put the court's trial date at risk.
Recognizing that the disputes were fundamentally technical, the court appointed Law & Forensics as a neutral special master under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 53. The mandate was unambiguous: cut through the procedural warfare, resolve the discovery disputes on the merits of the forensic record, and report recommendations the court could adopt.
Our approach
Law & Forensics assumed the role of an independent, court-facing neutral — owing duties to the court rather than to any party. The engagement ran three parallel workstreams:
Protocol arbitration. The special master convened both parties' technical teams, evaluated competing search-term and TAR proposals against defensibility and proportionality standards, and issued a binding-recommendation protocol that defined custodian scope, validation sampling, and quality-control benchmarks.
Forensic spoliation analysis. Rather than accept either side's narrative, the team independently examined preservation timelines, litigation-hold issuance, and the metadata of the disputed collections to determine whether evidence had actually been lost — and, if so, the appropriate proportional remedy.
Privilege-log adjudication. The special master designed a sampling-and-categorization methodology to triage thousands of challenged entries, conducted targeted in-camera review, and produced reasoned recommendations distinguishing properly withheld material from over-designations.
The impact
The court adopted the special master's recommendations in full. The negotiated protocol replaced two years of stalemate with a defensible, proportional path forward; the spoliation analysis resolved the sanctions fight without a windfall to either side; and the privilege adjudication narrowed the dispute to a manageable set of genuine claims. The trial date held, and the parties returned to litigating the merits.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Custodians covered by the negotiated protocol | 30+ |
| Disputed privilege entries adjudicated | 9,000+ |
| Special master recommendations adopted by the court | 100% |
| Trial date preserved | Yes |
