Monthly Archives: January 2024

Back when I was doing market analyst days for eDiscovery providers, I was frequently asked about the impact of taking a pure play eDiscovery company public. My opinion was and still is that it is a bad move. No matter how important to practitioners, I have never believed that eDiscovery is a long term market segment that stands alongside technology, Information Governance, legal services, etc. It does play vital roles in all of these mega-markets, but has a limited lifespan except for boutique service/tech providers. Sorry folks, but most of our preservation, collection and processing products/services are becoming default platform functionality offered by Office 365 and other systems. This process will take another 20 years to play out, but companies that go public quickly lose the ability to adapt to our changing market and redefine themselves to stay relevant to their customers. There are many global public corporations who have acquired or created eDiscovery offerings, but only a few pure play eDiscovery companies have gone public. My fast list of those left standing:

Sometimes the second take is much better than the first. We ran into technical problems on the BNA-Catalyst webinar back in June that ate into our discussion about how corporate counsel are beginning to reuse collections and work product in mature eDiscovery lifecycles. It is a good topic and we decided to make another run at it with Tom Seymour from Redgrave LLP and Mark Noel from Catalyst. In the end, we completely redid the content and approack after the three of us geeked out with case studies and success stories from recent engagements. If you have time tomorrow 1-2 pm EST, please listen in as we get granular with real advice and strategies. Reusing Collections and Review Work Product across Matters

Old habits die hard. Consumers have been buying eDiscovery processing and hosting services by the Gigabit ($/GB) since the early 2000’s. I remember how the first copy shops with a Discover-e or LAW license struggled to estimate the hours required to process folders of MS Office files. In the beginning, volume pricing gave buyers a predictable cost to collections. Now the average $/GB has plunged as better technology and automation has commoditized the real cost, quality control. I got the chance to insert a poll question into the recent BNA webinar on Reusing Collections sponsored by Catalyst. With over 350 registrants, we got almost 50% attendance and a great way to get a fast metric on how attendees buy eDiscovery today. What surprised me was the 18% who purported to use enterprise systems to handle all eDiscovery processing in-house.

Following the recent announcement that EDRM co-founder George Socha had joined provider BDO, the EDRM organization itself has been acquired by the Duke University School of Law for an undisclosed amount. This should not surprise industry veterans who have been watching EDRM for years as other education and standards organizations have gained market acceptance. From my perspective, the EDRM delivered great value and materials in the first 5-7 years when new practitioners needed a common vocabulary and process definition. It was never a true non-profit standards organization like the LTPI or the LTC4. Maybe moving under the academic umbrella will encourage participation without the agendas of commercial sponsors and partners. As our industry slowly matures we need more unbiased resources and authorities to keep up with our ever changing sources of ESI. The EDRM had a good run. Let’s hope that Duke Law gives it a new focus and solid foundation to serve the community.

My name is Greg and I am a recovering eDiscovery consultant, market analyst, researcher and blogger. I hope my readers have missed my sometimes acerbic, always unfiltered commentaries while I struggled to complete my dream home last quarter. If you have ever contemplated building a house, DON’T if you value your sanity, savings and relationships. The good news is that I am back. The other news is the slow transformation of eDJ Group back to a pure consulting practice. In essence, Mikki and I have returned to what we do best, solving eDiscovery problems and saving clients money. It took a year for all this to shake out and for me to decide what to do with the eDJ brand and research engine that so many of you have participated in or used for research on trends, products and best practices. The good news is that we have wonderful clients who want us to stay independent, so I am not selling eDJ to one of the new eDiscovery borgs that have been Pac-Man gobbling up all the small providers. Instead, I am working with my old developer to convert the website to a completely free commentary hub. So what does that mean?

As I finally come up for air after a whirlwind quarter, I realize that LTNY 2017 is around the corner and I have not even started booking briefings and social time. This is what happens when you go silent to get things done. I updated my LTNY tracking sheets and see that the consolidation trend continues to shrink the number of exhibitors and sponsors. Or maybe all the mid-tier providers have fled the high booth costs for lower cost suites in adjacent hotels? It will be interesting to see how many ‘mini events’ have sprung up this year to take advantage of eDiscovery’s largest gathering. The private customer panels run by Lighthouse last year reminded me of the early LTNY panels when I spoke as El Paso Corporation’s litigation support director. Much more transparent and down to earth compared to some of the sponsored panels I have moderated in recent years. I guess the small venue environment allows the panelists and audience to feel more intimate and comfortable. As you can see to the right, the numbers of LTNY exhibitors and sponsors continue to shrink.

For decades eDiscovery practitioners have longed for the ability to find, preserve and even review communications and files in the live enterprise environment. Why do we have to make a preservation copy before even indexing the bulk of non-responsive custodial ESI for early relevance analysis? Back in the late 1990’s it was clear that bad actors, mailbox limits and unstable infrastructure posed a significant risk of loss for ESI during the ECA months. Frankly, the email and file servers could not support dtSearch crawling them while under their normal load. Modern Exchange, SharePoint and cloud platforms bring their own robust indexes to the table. So why do most companies still make full custodial/department/system preservation collections? Why do providers routinely advise clients to process EVERYTHING into Relativity? (besides the obvious financial incentive)

It looks like Gartner is looking to broaden their executive strategic services down the chain to more practical-tactical management best practices for HR, sales, finance and legal/compliance. Gartner is paying $2.6 billion for CEB Inc. CEB Inc. describes itself as, “a best practice insight and technology company. We have a unique view into what matters—and what works—when driving corporate performance. With more than 30 years of experience working with top companies to share, analyze, and apply proven practices, we deliver innovative solutions that help you unlock your full potential.” Some might be surprised at the price tag, but CEB Inc. expects roughly $950M in 2017 revenue, which makes this a 2.7x multiple acquisition price, pretty much what you should pay for a public services company. Back at LTNY 2008, Barry Murphy and myself sat at the Hilton Lobby Lounge and were inspired to start eDJ Group by the service gaps we saw in Gartner and Forrester. Right idea, we were just too far ahead of the market. Sad story of my life with start ups.

update their offering profiles. The eDJ Matrix contains over 500 companies with over 900 offerings. Every year, I blast all the profile managers with my reminder that it is eDiscovery/IG buying season, so update your profiles with your new product releases! And every year a larger number of bad email addresses bounce back as upper level marketing/product managers do the eDiscovery shuffle. I had roughly 50 from my Monday blast. The fun part is getting to see where they have landed for the ones that have already registered new accounts for their new roles. With all the acquisitions and RIF’s in the last year, I should not be surprised. Sufficient to say that I would not consider most eDiscovery providers to be a life-long career choice. Maybe that explains the resume roulette that we see every year on the exhibit hall floor. I used to make a game of checking under the keyboards at the booths to see how many had resumes stashed under them. Try it, you might be surprised.

As I return to take briefings and monitor all my news engines, I am struck by the challenges faced by all of kCura’s competitors. There is no denying that Andrew Sieja has maneuvered Relativity into being the default hosted review platform for large discovery matters. The majority of recent eDJ RFP engagements for managed services have boiled down to what flavor of Relativity the client wants vs. whether they are willing to fight their retained counsel over using an alternative platform. Thus the differentiation theme I keep seeing in my provider briefings. They all trot out what they can do better and cheaper than Relativity as if that should convince AmLaw buyers to jump ship. We saw a similar hype cycle with Clearwell before the product went to hide in the Symantec portfolio. (to be fair, this seems to be the fate of EVERY eDiscovery product acquired by a software Borg) It will be interesting to see how this plays out against the Microsoft-Equivio team’s steady progress towards free in-place eDiscovery functionality. Returning to my briefing by the TCDI Fox team, let’s give you the highlights: