ENS + BDBF Achieve 94%+ Review Reductions on Three DSARs with Relativity aiR for Review

How did they do it?

• Achieved 94%+ review reduction across 130,000+ documents, with 99.8% aiR precision rate and complete production in as little as 48 hours on one DSAR.
• Customized matter-specific aiR for Review prompts to surface contextual personal data and strategically relevant material that keyword search would have missed.
• Surfaced key employment claim documents during the DSAR review process, later informing a dispute that was ultimately settled.

Turning a Common Legal Burden into a Repeatable Workflow

BDBF is a top ranked employment law firm in London specialising in high stakes and high value cases. ENS provides co-counsel to law firms through its specialist division, intelligENS, bringing data expertise, AI-driven methodologies, and technology workflows embedded in legal strategy. Since 2023, BDBF and ENS have worked together on high value litigations as well as on a growing volume of Data Subject Access Requests – a category of work that’s easy to underestimate.

Employers face considerable asymmetry when a DSAR is deployed in a dispute – it’s quick, easy and cheap for the employee to submit, but time-consuming, cumbersome and expensive for the employer to respond to. DSARs carry strict deadlines, require documented decision-making, and often arrive in clusters – with significant legal consequences if mishandled.

“Our partnership with ENS has enabled us to redress that balance for our employer clients, developing a workflow that allows us to respond to DSARs in a timely, proportionate way. ENS' adoption of aiR for Review allows us to quickly identify material germane to the request and gives us early notice of documents likely to be problematic in the dispute itself.”
Tom McLaughlin, Managing Associate, BDBF

intelligENS has the technology and workflows to meet these challenges. Across three DSAR matters in early 2026 alone – covering everything from a broad personal data request to a large-scale pre-litigation filing – the team processed over 130,000 documents. Every matter came back with a review reduction of 94% or more, every deadline was met, and not one data subject came back with a follow-up request.

That consistency is not a coincidence.

intelligENS has built structured, repeatable workflows within RelativityOne designed to handle DSARs arising in employment disputes with significant legal and reputational stakes. A three-strand methodology draws on expertise from adjacent practice areas:

• Data breach expertise, which automates the extraction and identification of personally identifiable information relating to the data subject
• Litigation expertise, which applies matter-specific search criteria and the defensible review, redact and produce methodologies typically used in eDiscovery
• Investigation expertise, which leverages aiR for Review to quickly uncover contextual personal data and documents relevant to parallel employment disputes

That third step is where the results get interesting.

Beyond Keywords: What aiR Finds That Search Terms Miss

Standard keyword search finds what you know to look for. aiR for Review brings something more: context.

intelligENS ran custom aiR prompts on every matter, calibrated to the specific background of the request, including the data subject's known health conditions, the nature of any active dispute, and the likely shape of relevant personal data. This allowed the team to identify documents that discuss a data subject at a deeper level, and to do it at scale, without second-guessing what might be buried in the data.

“What aiR for Review can do that’s very advantageous for DSARS is understand what personal information is, not just as an identifier but from a deeper, contextual lens.”
Linda Sheehan, Executive and Head of intelligENS, ENS

Three Complex Matters, One Solid Outcome

Contextual depth proved most valuable in the largest of the three DSAR matters – a tactical tool deployed ahead of anticipated litigation, a UK GDPR subject access request covering salary payments, sickness absence, performance evaluations, grievances, and workplace incidents.

Using the three-strand workflow guided by aiR for Review, intelligENS reduced the review set of 102,000+ documents to just 1,330 with a validated aiR precision rate of 94.7%, surfacing material relevant to the parallel employment claim, and providing earlier insight into the litigation position. Across the other two matters, by applying the same three-strand workflow guided by aiR for Review and curated to each specific matter, it delivered the same strong outcome:

In the second, intelligENS processed 24,575 documents, reduced the review set by 94%, and deduplicated the unique personal data down to less than 200 redacted pages in five days.

In the third, broader DSAR case, aiR for Review achieved a 99.8% precision rate validated by a senior intelligENS lawyer, with a completed DSAR bundle production in just 48 hours.

Predictable Scope and Predictable Cost from Day One

Incorporating Relativity aiR for Review has changed how intelligENS scopes and prices DSAR work for clients. Because aiR-driven review establishes the project scope early-on, clients know what a matter will cost before meaningful review begins.

For intelligENS, the value of aiR for Review lies in how it augments the team’s expertise rather than replacing it. Carefully designed prompts help prioritize likely relevance and surface contextual indicators. intelligENS’ approach integrates legal human expertise with advanced technology to deliver controlled outcomes across routine and complex matters.

For BDBF, this creates a trusted extension of their legal team, using the same workflow on matters where legal scrutiny is high – a solution built on consistent, repeatable results within the security of RelativityOne.