Loading ...Despite being a regular speaker on the eDiscovery conference circuit, this is my first time making the ILTA conference. The theme of the conference is Strategic Unity, expressed in social networking, new education initiatives and collaborative technologies. As a volunteer run organization, the tone at ILTA does not have the same frantic vendor driven character as Legal Tech has taken on. My panel session on ECA usage scenarios and perspectives seemed to go well, but that is always difficult to tell from the other side of the microphone. The top moments included Tom Morrisey’s “Voldemort, the software that cannot be named”, Chuck Kellner’s violation of the vendor profit oath and the agreement that there is no “ECA solution”, only features that support your ECA process. Imagine my surprise when Jim King dragged me over to the IPRO booth to proudly show me the Allegro banner proclaiming “Early Data Assessment”. Please forgive the iPhone picture quality…
Forgive the poor picture, just had to share
Although ILTA strives to be more about sessions and networking, there is an exhibit hall and I always look for market trends and messages from the booths. I saw the re-emergence of the “eDiscovery Solution” message that dominated LTNY 2008. The product suites on the first go round did not live up to the ‘solution’ hype, but we have seen enough acquisitions and consolidations in the last year to lend more substance to provider suite offerings. Other common topics included predictability, cost savings and simplicity. Here are some of my favorite banner quotes:
“Predictable Pricing”
“All-in-One”
“Cost me less and saved me money in weeks”
“Practical and Actionable”
“Out Predict, Out Perform”
“Got Predictive Coding?”
“Defensible, repeatable eDiscovery process”
and my very favorite- “What happens in our Vault, stays in our Vault”
I could not decide if the last was just a clever Vegas reference or it was a reference to an infinite retention product.
Often heard the same, but if there are no ECA solutions, which one comes closest?
August 27, 2010 at 9:39 am
eruano
Member Type: Provider | Role: Other | Size: Solo | Years of Experience: 17
I recieved a similar question at the end of the ILTA session.
“So what are your top three favorite ECA tools?”
Every new client serves to remind me that their needs, data profile, technical savvy, budget, etc are unique. That reinforces the basic tenant that there is no ‘best’ solution, only the best fit. I can see some of the arguments about feature coverage being the basis for a ‘solution’, but that leaves out license options, usability and a lot more. You could say that Summation had the ability to ingest, search, review and even produce ten years back. But we all know that those features were not scalable or robust enough for the growing size of matters collections.
I did not answer the question at the session and am not sure that it can be answered without some level of arbitrary opinion. Barry and I are working on the next generation of the eDiscovery application matrix and some white papers to help provide more resources for these kinds of questions without getting into rankings, waves, quadrants and other ‘best guess’ methods. Let me take a second pass at boiling down the ECA question in a journal post.
Greg
August 27, 2010 at 11:52 am
Greg Buckles
Member Type: Other | Role: Consultant | Size: Solo | Years of Experience: 22 | Certifications/Licenses: court certified expert witness
Thanks Greg. You and Barry always have great insight, so I’m looking forward to your posts on this subject.
September 29, 2010 at 10:12 am
eruano
Member Type: Provider | Role: Other | Size: Solo | Years of Experience: 17