Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2016-02-07 19:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
Legal Tech 2016 certainly had a lot to say about the state of the eDiscovery marketplace. Back in December I sampled the sponsor/exhibitor pages to see how this year stacked up against prior years. Although the conference picked up one sponsor and twenty exhibitors in the final 45 days, The LTNY event demonstrates the provider consolidation trend that has seen more acquisition/investment capital in the last 12 months than the prior 12 years. For an industry supposedly becoming mainstream and integrating with the traditional technology powerhouses, only the newly rebranded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) went for the full sponsorship route. All of the other track sponsors, keynote providers, etc. came from pure play eDiscovery providers such as FTI, Nuix, LexisNexis and others. Ad hoc counts of badge colors at various times gave me a rough 3-to-1 ratio of vendors to consumers in the exhibit maze or landings. All of this is purely anecdotal because ALM has not released actual attendance counts or rations since 2008 that I can find. To me, LTNY is our biz dev/career fair/trade show, even if some marketers dress it up in CLE clothing. I had a good time in the unexpectedly warm weather. Here are some of my briefing notes and event impressions:
[NOTE: sharp readers who checked the LTNY via web.archive and wayback have alerted me that ALM seems to remove/add exhibitors to past years. I believe that I started actively tracking these numbers in 2010, which makes the 2008-2009 numbers dubious. ALM has not formally released attendance or exhibitor metrics in the last 5+ years, so tracking the exhibitor/sponsors in the months leading up to the show is my best effort on monitoring annual deltas and trends.]
- Everyone talks IG as their future, but then admits that they cannot define what means.
- Barclay Blair at the Information Governance Initiative (IGI) can give an aspirational definition, even if we are still struggling to get benchmarks and real world examples of mature IG success stories.
- Rampant acquisitions and rising booth costs have eliminated the vast majority of those cute regional provider booths plastered with Relativity signs from last year.
- The national/international provider booths are more artistic than informative.
- Crop of new cloud self-service SaaS players such as Everlaw, Disco, Logikcull, Cloud9, etc. seem to be aimed at the new SMB customers.
- Orange continues to be the new eDiscovery black. That poor couple handing out fliers at the escalators wore orange outfits so bright that they hurt to look at. Nice gig.
- Security, file sharing, collaboration, encryption and other law firm support providers steadily edging out
- eDiscovery vendors.
- Xact Data Discovery briefing:
- Stress response speed.
- No project management fees.
- Talks IG consulting and focus, but customer base seems to be law firms.
- Native Excel redaction tech to be released.
- Everlaw briefing:
- New analytics added to their StoryBuilder user interface.
- Automation to extend and simplify human review rather than replacement.
- All in pricing.
- DTI briefing:
- Continuing to acquire providers to make sure they stay the largest Relativity provider.
- Observing slowing US growth, while EU and Asia accelerate.
- Cloud 9 briefing:
- New HTML 5 interface focused on consumer self-service model.
- Subscription rates for hosting in their private cloud.
- Clustify analytics for threading and clustering, but no TAR as yet.
- [eDJ Update- Cloud 9 offers TAR services, just not integrated into their SaaS platform yet.]
- NexLP briefing:
- Story engine now has processing package added for full stand alone functionality.
- Cool time animation visualization.
- Established channel partners with IRIS (now acquired by Epiq).
- Flat rate $/doc pricing.
- iDS briefing:
- Continued growth in security and IG maturity programs for international clients.
- Focus on building hub of top expertise such as new Seattle office with Brenda Leatha.
- Lighthouse briefing:
- Launch of web-based dashboard and reporting tool – Lighthouse Navigate.
- Fabulous Illuminations panels for corporate/firm attendees with real content and audience interaction. Vegas rules for the discussions, but worth the time.
As always, there was too much crammed into 3 days to relate. The best part was catching up with friends old and new. If I missed you or you have questions about my perspectives, please reach out.
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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