I wanted to take advantage of Rob Robinson’s timely release of his Winter 2021 eDiscovery Pricing Survey Results and compare a few key prices with those I calculated in my blog analysis of the TAR fight order in Lawson v. Spirit Aerosystems. I appreciate and encourage Rob to keep running his surveys. Seventy nine respondents (n=79) is quite respectable given the recent proliferation of [...]
These kinds of parallel acquisitions generally happen right after a round of funding. To provide some context, Exterro was founded in 2004 and took $100M round of funding in 2018. Zoominfo has them at $36M in revenue with 170 employees (grain of salt). Founded in 1987, AccessData was one of the first forensic tools I used during my CSI years. Owler has AD’s at [...]
Provider pricing and custodial metrics are often impossible to find because so much of the eDiscovery market insists on wrapping sales in NDAs. That can be frustrating to a consultant who specializes in solution proposals, ROI analysis and RFP engagements. So you can imagine how happy I am to share the public details gleaned from digging through the actual order and Casetext’s fabulous synopsis. [...]
I vividly recall my first briefing with Nuix’s dynamic duo, Eddie and Morgan Sheehy. Of course, it happened at a LTNY (probably 2009, but they all blur together). That was shortly after we had converted the eDiscovery Journal from editorial press into the eDJ Group market analyst model. I was impressed with Eddie’s laser focus on breaking the $/GB consumption market and loved Morgan’s [...]
If you somehow missed the September 11, 2020 announcement (MC223426) or January’s (MC199461) admin message, Microsoft has now effectively disabled any legal matters you have in the original Advanced eDiscovery (designated v1.0). You can manually export the data, but I have yet to find any reports or convenience features that would enable a lonely litsupport manager to dump out a list of matters, custodians, [...]
My peer Tom O’Connor spotted this post Ignite 2020 Microsoft announcement of upcoming new Teams functionality. These remind me of the recent online Word transcript feature, useful for end users and a potential headache for eDiscovery practitioners. Despite O365’s Advanced eDiscovery module, Microsoft has always focused first on end user functionality over compliance, security or legal discovery requirements. There is little doubt that the [...]
Normally I dig through the actual ruling language for new eDiscovery caselaw. In this case my former Symantec alumni has written a great summary of the contested discovery protocols. I refrained from quoting his closing four take-aways, but they are worth a read. What caught my interest here was the defendant’s original strategy to use its “Microsoft Tool” (I bet O365 Advanced eDiscovery) to [...]
I do a lot of acceptance and QC testing for clients as their designated 30(b)(6) witness of their discovery systems. In fact, I like to find hidden gotchas and exceptions that I can take back to providers to fix. In over 30 years I have never found a ‘bad’ analytic system. Instead I frequently encounter users who do not ‘trust but verify’ before they [...]
I resist reviewing white papers behind the contact wall, but Joe’s new ‘multidimensional analytics’ catch-word lured me into ponying up my email address to Knovos. Like many white papers, this one focuses on the benefits more than the technical functionality, but a demo or access to a matter loaded with public data should provide that info. Knovos believes their advantage lies in how they [...]
This week Microsoft added an automated transcription feature to their online Word. It is easy to use and renders a surprisingly accurate transcript that differentiates between speakers and keeps the times of the conversation segments. This is great from a user perspective. Why bother to keep meeting notes when you have a free transcript of everything said? It does present some challenges to your [...]