An Unconventional Collection

2020 was a weird year. Lots of plywood, Plexiglas, facemasks, crazy politics, and walks with the dog.  That last one is maybe the only one I enjoyed.  In the middle of the summer, imagine a client pulling their hair out wondering how they can pull off the collection of 15 mobile devices for one matter - custodians scattered all over the country.  Travel seemed impractical.  Shipping was out of the question. Most phones are Androids.  Not a single person was willing to be separated from his/her device for more than 1-2 hours.  Some were resisting the whole notion of sharing their data.  The legal team was stuck. Completely stuck.  Then an annual Ranching convention appeared on the calendar.  Amazingly, 100% of the custodians planned to be in attendance.  C-TEQ assembled a team to be there, set up a booth, and got to work, doing speed collections.  Careful planning reduced the per-device processing time by two thirds. Good thing.  Over the first 24 hours, the list doubled (the majority of these are Android devices).  The allotted time (2.5 days) remained the same.  All the custodians including those adamantly opposed, were persuaded to cooperate. Good old-fashioned hospitality and communications did the trick.

In what would’ve taken at least 8-10 weeks to accomplish and countless logistical hoops happened in about 48 hours. The streamlined process and fitting in with the convention goers were the two keys in pulling this off.  Even when the odds (COVID; time v. material) seemed daunting, cool heads prevailed.