DataCAT – Data Control, Analysis and Transfer.

The Challenge

King & Wood Mallesons’ (KWM) European arm filed for administration on 17th January 2017. KWM had merged with SJ Berwin in 2013, who at their peak in 2008 were ranked as the 14th biggest UK law firm.

The collapse was one of the biggest in the UK legal market and presented a number of challenges for the administrators, Andrew Hosking and Sean Bucknall of Quantuma LLP. One of these concerned the control, extraction and transfer of a massive volume of valuable client data. Ruby Datum were engaged by Quantuma to orchestrate this project.

KWM’s offices were in a prime London location and their daily rent charges were substantial. It was therefore imperative for Quantuma, that the office could be closed as soon as possible.

Our Solution

Our rapid-response team were quickly on site and worked with Quantuma to quickly secure control of KWM’s IT system. This gave us complete control over who could access data and what they could do with it. We identified and worked with those members of KWM’s IT team who had intimate knowledge of the IT system to help identify the extent, formats and location of data.

Once we had visibility over the makeup of KWM’s IT system, we engaged specialist technology consultants, Tiger Eye, to assist with data extraction from KWM’s Document Management System. With over 30 Terabytes of data to be exported and transferred to 24 separate law firms, this was a major exercise. By working on-site with Quantuma during the entire project, we were able to keep them fully informed on progress and work together to resolve issues as they arose.

We also leveraged our Virtual Data Room platform as part of this project. It helped to organise the vast amount of exported documents and gave recipients the ability to perform searches. This is hosted in our highly secure cloud network, deep inside an ISO 270001 certified data centre within an Ex-MoD bunker.

Following extraction of all relevant data, we provided a full data wipe on all KWM devices using ISO 27001 and ISO 27040 accredited software. This included desktops, laptops and mobile phones.

The Result

• By taking control of the IT system early on, we mitigated the possibility of commercially valuable data being lost, corrupted or deleted.
• We were able to bring legal, regulatory and technical expertise to our solution via partnerships with industry experts.
• The costly lease for KWM’s London office could be terminated ahead of expectations, thus preserving value for our client.

Andrew Hosking, a partner at Quantuma and one of the Joint Administrators of KWM commented:

“Ruby Datum was the obvious choice to help us through what has been a  challenging and time-pressured period. The Ruby Datum platform has provided us with a secure, intuitive and scalable technological solution to transfer millions of documents quickly and efficiently to buyers so as to ensure the protection of clients following the collapse of KWM. In addition, the Ruby Datum team provided the support and expertise to facilitate  the extraction of data including managing each secure data room.”