I try to read provider marketing papers when they are not hidden behind the contact collection wall, especially when they promise lists of cost saving tips. In this case, the list of ten tips seems to boil down to in-sourcing your ediscovery and buy Zapproved’s products. The overall principals behind the ‘tips’ are sound if rather obvious. Unfortunately, my PDF copy was missing all [...]
Most eDiscovery M&A is all about consolidating customer bases or creating a more exciting technology solution. Press releases focus on the ‘better together’ story and frequently skip hard details like potential redundancies or layoffs. The snippet above about a ‘dedicated RelativityOne environment in Canada’ caught my attention. Legility has not yet responded to my questions about whether this instance is Legility owned, hosted and [...]
Refreshing blog calling out classic eDiscovery sales/billing/pricing games. Our industry is rife with reps who are pressured to bid low and bill high. I do not recall being called an ‘ediscovery wonk’, but if the hat fits I will wear it. Since RFP engagements regularly follow up my typical strategy assessment or health check engagements, I see these games all the time. Cat’s basic [...]
For the past 15 years I have seen providers modifying, revising and ‘updating’ the EDRM model to better suit their products or services. A fast image search for ‘New EDRM’ brings up some lovely examples. I view Zapproved model as being more aspirational than practical based on what I see in most corporations. Zapproved’s EDMM imagines that discovery takes place inside corporate info governance [...]
My philosophy is once a client, always a client. Got what seemed to be a typical referral request from a counsel I had recently supported on a corporate client matter. The classic, “Who do you recommend for Relativity hosting?” quickly went down a rabbit hole of new generation data sources, foreign language docs and such that wrote off any of the new self-service providers/platforms. [...]
Excel tool for corporate legal departments considering adding an on-premise or cloud based eDiscovery platform that covers legal holds through review and production. This tool is derived from the eDiscovery Matrix and is a fairly narrowly focused version of broader RFP tools used for eDJ Group clients over the last decade. eDiscovery Journal members are welcome to use and modify this tool with attribution [...]
Ideally case studies lay out enough information about the challenges, pain points, approach strategies and metrics to calculate a decent ROI and give readers a peak into solving a particular problem. This SEC inquiry case study focuses on search/review/production issues for new generation collaboration systems like WhatsApp. Deduplication and conversation thread reconstruction is indeed a pain point, especially when execs were using multiple mobile [...]
While I am happy to see nimble cloud eDiscovery providers tackling the processing/review of mobile device ESI, I still want to see practical solutions for ongoing mobile device preservation and remote collection.
Many of my engagements result in supporting client RFP’s for eDiscovery hosting, collection or ECM services/systems. A lot of that support is translating or analyzing pricing models so that client’s can make strategic vs. tactical buying decisions. Traditional eDiscovery providers consider their large enterprise proposals and pricing confidential. The newer generation of self-service cloud hosting players like Lexbe after the SMB market openly advertise [...]
I was reading a well researched news story in the aftermath of the Fort Lauderdale protests that turned into a violent confrontation between police and protesters. Several items caught my attention that could have impact on events that result in litigation/discovery during this time of discord. Body Worn Cameras (BWC) and video surveillance are more commonplace now than ever. Many of my industrial clients require that certain employees wear BWCs or have vehicle/facility cameras that operate on similar technologies. I intend to stay away from politics on essays in the eDiscovery Journal. As a former police criminalist I am very interested in evolving technologies to record and reconstruct incidents. In this and many other recent confrontations, police departments state that BWC footage is not available because the cameras were not turned on. Let’s discuss what data is available to an investigator or requesting party.