[author: Bruno Massard]
As AI continues to equip legal teams to enhance operations, gone are the days when internal investigations require extensive manual effort to address misconduct effectively. AI tools enable compliance teams to uncover evidence, streamline processes, and enhance investigative efficiency while preparing them for future investigations.
Powering Investigations With AI
AI leverages advanced machine learning models to analyze large volumes of data, detect patterns, and generate insights that would otherwise require extensive human effort. In the context of internal investigations, AI tools rapidly sift through emails, contracts, and other digital records, identifying potential red flags with precision. Information detected by AI technologies often goes unnoticed by manual reviewers; leveraging AI when conducting internal investigations allows this process to become more data-driven and reliable, ensuring peace of mind when aiming to uncover evidence.
Barriers With Traditional Investigations
Despite the rigorous nature of internal investigations, many organizations struggle with inefficient and outdated methodologies. Most commonly, organizations struggle with:
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Dependence on Third Parties: Hiring third-party firms to conduct digital evidence collection can be costly and time-consuming, delaying investigative processes.
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Limited Internal Expertise: Compliance teams may lack the technical skills to perform deep data analysis, forcing them to outsource essential tasks.
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The Cost of Invested Time: Reviewers spend hours analysing data to uncover evidence with the added risk of human error overlooking critical information.
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Lack of Appropriate Technology: Limited access to the right technologies can hinder corporate investigations, potentially leading to less comprehensive analyses and missed critical information.
The Right Tool for You
Depending on your organization’s experience with AI, the appropriate tool might vary for your team. With the right experience, AI tools such as eDiscovery are able to extract, analyze, and find meaningful patterns when uncovering evidence.
AI Enhances Investigations
AI transforms investigations by prioritizing evidence-based discovery rather than relying solely on human testimonies. AI tools can flag anomalies in financial records, detect suspicious conversations in emails, and correlate data points across sources with an added ability to detect relationships between timelines and events. Given the sensitive nature of any internal investigation, allowing AI to conduct evidence research swiftly eliminates concerns when investigations are conducted in person. Instead of conducting exhaustive interviews to validate claims, compliance teams can collect and present irrefutable digital evidence that strengthens cases and speeds up resolutions with ease.
Victoria Arcos, Senior Associate, Compliance and Investigations, Demarest, reflects that with these tools, “cost optimization is directly linked to the volume of documents needing review. Severe cases — complex fraud, corruption — should not require reviews exceeding 5,000 to 7,000 documents. Providing clients with confidence that 50, 100, or 500 documents can uncover behavioral misconduct — and that such reviews are affordable and timely — is an undisputed competitive advantage.”
Leveraging eDiscovery Tools
Despite the complexity of AI technologies, user-friendly eDiscovery platforms position users across varying teams to quickly and easily become trained with these tools. A common misconception among early adopters is that eDiscovery solutions are only suited for complex cases. However, no matter the complexity of the investigation, evidence gathered by AI technologies will hold up more effectively against interviews. eDiscovery tools strategically position companies to:
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Perform real-time searches within corporate databases.
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Automate document analysis, reducing investigative workload.
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Ensure compliance with regulatory standards by tracking data usage and access logs.
The Future of Compliance and Investigations
The next generation of compliance officers will not only be investigators but also digital analysts, leveraging AI to enhance their work and leading the future of corporate governance. Organizations that invest in AI compliance solutions will be better equipped to prevent fraud, misconduct, and regulatory violations in an increasingly complex legal environment. Learn more about how Epiq Discovery strengthens investigative capabilities for compliance teams.
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