Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2015-11-08 19:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
Are you the go-to eDiscovery associate or counsel at your firm? Do they drop you into every meeting that contains esoteric terms like email threading, search criteria or clustering? You are wined and dined by hungry vendors and grateful client litsupport managers alike. But how do your partners and peers view your role and future at the firm? Guess what, you may now be pigeon-holed as the firm geek and your partner track may now lead in circles. Why? Because a good chunk of the money you save your clients generally comes out of the partners pockets. Your culling-processing protocol just cut the collection by 80%. That sent your fellow associates scrambling to find other billable tasks instead of coasting through the holidays at 40 docs/hour. I wanted to share these observations from my ongoing analytics adoption interviews. After a recent briefing with David Cowen, I added asked my interview respondents if they thought that analytics would help or hurt their eDiscovery careers. Several savvy respondents highlighted the general resistance to using PC-TAR for actual relevance/privilege decisions. That opened the door to the observation that generally partners are made based on their ability to recruit new clients and expand firm revenue. Very few firms have launched an eDiscovery practice group or actively promote their eDiscovery expertise/capabilities. These firms may reward and respect an eDiscovery all-star partner, but they seem to be the exception to the rule. It may be that the slow transformation of the U.S. legal economy through Alternative Fee Arrangements and new professional conduct rules will rescue associates with a technical fetish from a career dead end.
Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a ‘Good Karma’ call. His active research topics include analytics, mobile device discovery, the discovery impact of the cloud, Microsoft’s Office 365/2013 eDiscovery Center and multi-matter discovery. Recent consulting engagements include managing preservation during enterprise migrations, legacy tape eliminations, retention enablement and many more.
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