Several headlines and familiar names caught my eye as I skimmed my weekend feed. The founder of Vista Equity Partners (Robert F. Smith) announced a $140M settlement with the DOJ and the IRS while his long term Texas business partner Robert T. Brockman was charged with evading $2 billion in taxes, the ‘largest-ever’ tax fraud case to date. Vista’s co-founder Brian Sheth is said [...]
This blog relies on two of Logikcull’s surveys, 2020 Corporate In-Housing Survey (behind the contact wall) and a curiously untitled joint survey with LegalBillReview.com. As you might expect from the snippets, their message is that in-house legal teams are focused on reducing spend and can do so with their services. While I agree with the overall idea that reducing data reduces review spend, I [...]
KLDiscovery Inc.’s announcement of a roughly 18% drop in revenue for Q2 2020 is actually less than I expected. They also managed to cut operating expenses by 15.8% (which translates to a loss of people and office space). There are few publicly owned eDiscovery corporations. The majority privately owned companies tend to conceal their financial health unless they are actively soliciting a round of [...]
Far too many of the marketing emails that wind up in my feeds or Inboxes do not convey the ‘simple’ functionality of the product or service. It is frustrating to have to go to a web site to figure out that SimpleLegal is a cloud based legal billing management platform. eBilling is a reality for corporations with any real litigation profile. Since Mitratech seems [...]
As I listened to an interview with Mary Trump about how she turned over financial documents to the New York Times it got me thinking about all the incredibly sensitive information just parked at firms world wide for inactive/settled matters. Fred Trump’s contested will was settled in 2001. Those 19 boxes of documents sat at her law firm for roughly 17 YEARS before she [...]
The headline got me excited that this new MSFT O365 package might enable my clients to better monitor policy and data management compliance. The reality seems pretty weak. Agentless monitoring of desktop and MS Edge actions such as downloads, forwards to banned domains, etc. We have been able to see those in logs for years and to create custom log based alerts. The new [...]
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 [...]
Volume, cost and time estimation Excel spreadsheet tool originally developed by the EDRM Metrics IV group. Made available since this tool is no longer available as source material on the EDRM Duke site. It was the principal work product of Greg Buckles, Eric Derk and Jack Halprin. Although some of the assumptions are dated, the UTMBS codes are still valid and the formulas are [...]
The relatively low rate of COVID-19 work safety lawsuits is not surprising while we are in the midst of the pandemic. I expect an inevitable surge in personal injury advertisements after we have an effective treatment or vaccine. “Were you or a loved one infected at work? Let the tough, smart lawyers at Acme Firm fight for your fair compensation!” I am not saying [...]
Since March, most corporate counsel and discovery response teams have been working remotely. The global pandemic may have paused or slowed many civil courts, regulators and auditors, but not all. Many of my long term corporate clients issued work stoppage orders to control costs and gather information on the potential impact of the pandemic. It is now clear that social distancing and travel restrictions [...]