General:
Q. What differentiates Cobra Legal Solutions from its competitors?
A. Three items which most clearly differentiate Cobra from most of its competitors are:

Service Offerings:
Q: What are your current service offerings?
A: Cobra provides cost-effective document review and litigation technology management consulting services for U.S. corporate legal departments and law firms through our on-site/off-shore business process.  Cobra has also performed research projects, and is prepared to discuss with you whether we can be a cost-effective resource for your other legal-related projects.

Q: Does Cobra plan on providing any services in addition to document review?
A: While our current effort revolves around litigation support services, we believe that our staff is fully capable of assisting in a wide variety of legal-related tasks.  We would be comfortable undertaking document analysis and summarization in the corporate context, and believe that we can provide a very cost effective solution for contract management, among other things.  We have staff members that have experience engaging in research, preparing first drafts of documents and other similar projects.  Before we undertake a new project, we want to make sure we fully understand the nature of the project to assure that we can perform up to exacting expectations.  We anticipate providing document and deposition summaries, litigation technology consulting, and contract database management, among other services, in the near future.  We are happy to speak with you about how we can meet your needs.

Q: Can you explain more about your litigation technology management consulting services?
A: Cobra can assist in managing a wide range of discovery services where the use of litigation technology is required.  We can advise clients on best practices and selection of appropriate vendors. We can work directly with clients to ensure the processes are performed in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

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Process:
Q: How does Cobra handle very large or specialized matters?
A: Our India-based team of 40 attorneys can handle a variety of large, complex litigation matters.  Cobra can work with you to meet your needs for additional reviewers for large or growing matters.  We can partner with you to provide customized training programs or to hire additional personnel to address the unique needs of specialized matters.

Q. How is supervision handled for offshore review?
A. Cobra's established project management practices enable our staff and your attorneys to oversee a document review easily.  Cobra's India-based Vice President of Litigation directly supervises our attorneys in India and provides regular reports and updates to our U.S.-based Managing Director of Litigation.  Cobra's Managing Director of Litigation will partner with your attorneys to assist in supervising the offshore review in manner that achieves your objectives ensures compliance with professional and ethical guidelines, including confidentiality and privilege.

Q: With whom would I communicate during a project?
A: We provide a high level of personal interaction on every project.   Our U.S. team members are available during your office hours.  Our Managing Director of Litigation is available to address substantive legal issues, and our Managing Director of Technology handles technology issues.  We can also arrange direct access to any member of our Cobra team so that you or any member of your staff may work directly with our team in India as you desire.

Furthermore, technology provides you access to your data when you need it.  Web-hosted document review platforms allow for real-time, instantaneous access to your documents.  Cobra can supplement this access with reports detailing the progress of the entire review as well as the progress of individual reviewers or review folders.  Depending on the software platform employed, Cobra can provide flexible reporting options, a variety of sorting and formatting controls, and the ability to access the reports on-line or download them to a spreadsheet.  We can also help you leverage tools such as an online team calendar, online bulletin board and automated e-mails announcing changes to ensure that everyone on the review team is informed and up-to-date.

Q: How do you resolve problems in India quickly given the distance and time difference?
A: Our U.S. and India Management Teams communicate frequently and regularly and are available via e-mail and telephone. We maintain all our project-related communications in writing, such as decision logs, change requests and outstanding questions, to facilitate clear communication.   We employ other well-honed project management practices to turn the time differences from a potential disadvantage into an actual advantage. 

Q: What quality assurance and control measures does Cobra undertake?
A. Ensuring quality is our highest priority.  We engage in quality assurance measures at every stage in a client engagement.  At the outset of an engagement, we develop a client-specific process plan to meet clients' individual needs.  We not only advise as to quality control best practices but also can integrate our clients' preferred quality control measures into our own.  We also conduct comprehensive initial training for our Indian attorney team with the involvement of your attorneys, followed by close audits of all work-product to correct any misunderstandings or errors and to ensure quality for the remainder of the project.

Our normal practice is to engage in multi-tiered quality control processes throughout the project to ensure consistency and quality in all stages of service delivery.  Our quality control measures can include:

We would be happy to send you a proposed quality control work flow plan to illustrate our standard quality control processes and are happy to integrate your preferences and best practices into our work.

Q: Does Cobra partner with any contract attorney agencies in the U.S. for purposes of sharing different components of a review project?
A: We are happy to partner with other staffing agencies and vendors to execute your document review project.  Our experienced team can provide consulting services as how to put the best team together to meet your discovery needs.

Q. Does Cobra process data?
A. No, Cobra does not process data.  However, we have excellent relationships with many processing vendors and will work closely with them on a project, if needed.

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Experience:
Q. How experienced is your management team?
A. Please see About Us: Management Team for profiles of the individual members of our management team.  As a group, our U.S.-trained managers and litigation support services professionals have years of experience with large case litigation at major firms such as Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Milbank Tweed, White & Case, Cleary Gottlieb, and Steptoe & Johnson.

Q. With which document review platforms does Cobra have experience?
A. Cobra Legal Solutions's managers have experience with the major document review platforms, including ADI, Attenex, CaseCentral, Concordance, Documatrix, EED, Ringtail, and Summation, among others.

Q. What is the hiring process for your Indian attorneys?
A. Cobra Legal Solutions has implemented a comprehensive recruitment program, designed to identify the best candidates with outstanding reasoning skills and English proficiency.

Q. From what tier of Indian law schools do you hire?
A. Attorneys are selected from the most prestigious law schools in India, many of whom graduated with honors.  Many of our attorneys graduates from what are recognized widely as the country's top ten law schools (out of more than 760 law colleges).

Q. What on-going training do you provide for your attorneys?
A. Cobra Legal Solutions has a highly interactive training style designed to encourage a participative learning environment in which the team can feel comfortable asking questions and learning from one another.  We find that the best training results from a team motivated to ask questions and a management team prepared to answer those questions quickly and accurately.

Security / Risk Management:
Q. How does Cobra ensure client confidentiality?
A. Cobra Legal Solutions requires U.S. and Indian employees and supporting contractors to sign agreements mandating confidentiality and security of client information.  Cobra's agreements with its clients provide that parties must resolve any disputes in the U.S. pursuant to the commercial arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association.  We are happy to provide you with a copy of the confidentiality agreements and to incorporate additional language at your request.

Q. What data privacy protections are in place for data reviewed at Cobra's India office?
A. Cobra Legal Solutions utilizes several internal security measures at its India office to protect sensitive data including, but not limited to:

Q. What technology measures ensure security?
A. First, the hosting platform provides security.  In general, we will work on a Citrix (or another terminal server) platform so that no data is downloaded from the hosted database to the reviewer workstations. Second, attorney reviewers are neither allowed to print from their workstations nor allowed to copy anything to a removable media device like a CD or thumb drive.   Third, Cobra also restricts attorney access to external e-mail and access to the Cobra's facility with a cardkey system and security checkpoints.

Q. Where will my data be hosted?
A. Clients will normally have their data hosted in the U.S.  If there are data privacy issues involved with the collection of data in a country with strict privacy laws, clients may have their data hosted in the U.K. or the country where the data is collected, depending on the legal judgment of the attorneys overseeing e-discovery or e-disclosure.

We work with many of the industry leaders in hosting and, as part of any project undertaken by Cobra, are directly involved in working closely with the hosting vendor to ensure that client data is absolutely secure during the review and production process.

Furthermore, if the hosted platform offers a Citrix or some type of terminal-server solution, then none of the client data will be downloaded to the local workstations of the reviewers in India.  If the client chooses a web-based application that downloads data to workstations as its hosting platform, then Cobra has implemented strict security measures to ensure that any data residing on any workstation in India cannot be copied, printed or e-mailed by any reviewer.

Q. Will we always have instant access to our documents?
A. Under normal circumstances, you will have 24 hour / 7 day a week access to the document database via a secure login/password procedure over the internet.  If the hosting vendor needs to perform planned server maintenance requiring any downtime, it is usually done during off hours, and the vendor has responsibility for providing advance notification to users.

Q. What types of redundancy measures would be in-place to minimize the amount of downtime?
A. On the hosting side, most of the leading vendors have full redundancy with a mirrored system if there is any significant downtime.   During the planning phase of a project, Cobra will advise our clients about these types of issues as it relates to any hosting vendor already chosen or under consideration for a project.

Independent of the hosting firm, Cobra has in place a dedicated and secured backup internet line with another leading Indian internet service provider (ISP) if the cause of downtime in India is related to a problem with the main ISP and their line into our facility.  We have configured our network in India to default within seconds to the backup line if there is temporary failure with the primary line to the Internet.

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Value:
Q: How can Cobra help us manage costs?
A: Cobra's talented, highly trained India attorney team provides efficient document review at competitive rates.  Effective project management and quality control permit us to control costs further.  Cobra can advise on cost-saving litigation technology and can help to manage vendor relationships.  Every client has access to real-time reports on incurred costs.

Q: When is it cost-effective for my legal department or law firm to choose outsourcing?
A. Outsourcing document review to Cobra is cost-effective for many types of clients.  Large legal departments, smaller legal departments, and large and medium law firms can all benefit from Cobra's efficient, trustworthy document review services.  Cobra can leverage current organizational resources to handle large document reviews without incurring unnecessary additional expenses.  Law firms work with Cobra to provide an additional set of services to their clients without taking on additional permanent personnel themselves.

In addition to making use of talented labor at lower costs, outsourcing document review to Cobra means:

Ethics:
Q. How does Cobra check for conflicts?
A. We rigorously check for potential conflicts by following ABA Model Rule 1.7 prior to every engagement.  To comply with the ABA rule, we update continuously data regarding parties currently and previously engaged by Cobra review attorneys, as well as any other involved parties.  We immediately disclose any potential conflicts based on our ongoing reviews.  We can incorporate any additional preferred conflict check processes into our own.

Q. Is Cobra, or am I, at risk of aiding the unlicensed practice of law?
A. A number of bar association committees have issued advisory opinions outlining how to outsource within local professional and ethical guidelines.  Generally such opinions call for assessment of the following issues: (1) does the arrangement avoid aiding and abetting in the unlawful practice of law; (2) should client consent be obtained; (3) are client confidences and secrets adequately preserved; (4) are the outsourced services billed appropriately; and (5) have potential conflicts of interest been adequately addressed?

You can avoid the unlicensed practice of law or breach of other professional guidelines by following the requirements of the applicable jurisdictions.  We can provide assistance in assessing your local requirements upon request.

Q. How do you address the malpractice risk?
A. We of course attempt to minimize errors through rigorous screening of our attorneys, rigorous training, and rigorous attention to our work, followed by quality control.  Having U.S.-trained lawyers on-site in India is a critical part of our effort to provide quality work product.  We recognize, however, that from time to time mistakes may occur.  Our India attorney team may be covered by your organization's malpractice policy.  Notwithstanding, Cobra carries its own errors and omissions insurance.

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