How Canadian litigation teams are managing the 'complexity crunch'

Modern litigation has outgrown its most familiar problem: the challenge facing Canadian legal teams is no longer simply too many documents. Evidence today is scattered across collaboration platforms, mobile devices, cloud applications, and messaging systems and courts are holding teams to a higher standard of proportionality and defensibility while timelines and budgets continue to tighten. That combination is forcing a fundamental rethink of how discovery gets done.

On Oct. 20, Array Canada brings three of its senior eDiscovery practitioners together for a one-hour Canadian Lawyer webinar, Data, Volume, and Defensibility: How Canadian Litigation Teams are Managing the Complexity Crunch, to address this sea change.

The real complexity crunch

The shift in discovery demands centres on judgment. Before selecting a technology or workflow, legal teams need to think clearly about the types of data involved, the objectives of the matter, the applicable risks, and the level of review that’s required.

Making those decisions early, rather than reacting once the data has compounded, is what separates a manageable matter from an expensive one.

Evaluating technology presents its own challenge. Generative AI and Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) are increasingly common in discovery workflows, but adoption is not a strategy. The more useful questions are how a given approach will be tested and validated, what quality controls are in place, where human judgment remains essential, and how key decisions will be documented.

Collecting and reviewing less data isn’t the point, though it might be a side effect. The ultimate goal is to make better-informed decisions about what genuinely needs to be brought in and analyzed. From there, it’s important to recognize that there’s not any single technology or workflow that suits every matter. The appropriate approach depends on an array of factors including legal objectives, data characteristics, timeline, and the risk profile of each case.

Efficiency and defensibility are not in opposition

Efficiency and defensibility are not in opposition, and this session is built around that premise. Speakers Jessica Lockett, vice president of eDiscovery services at Array Canada; Abel Kosatsky, senior review manager; and Joe Evangelista, manager of eDiscovery client services, will draw on real-world, anonymized case studies — including matters involving millions of documents — to ground the discussion in practice rather than theory.

The session will also address how to evaluate and validate technology-assisted workflows, where advanced analytics, TAR, and generative AI deliver genuine value, and how to make proportionality decisions without narrowing the data set so aggressively that defensibility suffers. The most effective litigation teams, the session argues, are those who assess the specifics of a matter early and adjust as it develops.

For Canadian litigators, discovery counsel, and legal professionals working on complex matters, this is a practitioner-led conversation designed to help you meet the moment. Register now to secure your place.

This article was produced in partnership with Array Canada