Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2012-01-30 16:55:14Format, images and links may no longer function correctly. The first day of LegalTech NY 2012 was a whirlwind, to say the least. The day began very early with a breakfast kick-off meeting for the eDJ Peer Group. It was great to hear actual eDiscovery professionals – those who are on the ground dealing with the day-to-day issues – talk about the topics they would like to see eDJ’s research address. Among the leading topics: document retention and disposal; cloud security; legal review cost reduction; predictive coding; and more targeted collections.
The general feeling at the Peer Group meeting is that companies are beginning to address broader information governance (IG) foundations upon which to build out more efficient eDiscovery processes. Over the last 4-5 years, companies purchased point solutions as band aids, but now want a more permanent solution. I got the sense that these folks were willing to swap out some of their current tools for a single application that can manage more of the eDiscovery lifecycle.
I had the chance to meet with many, many vendors today. There are too many to list individually, so I won’t name any. Suffice it to say, almost all talked about some kind of technology-assisted review offering. There was a good amount of chatter about defensible disposition, eDiscovery platforms that can handle more and more of the tasks throughout the lifecycle, and The Cloud.
One topic that came up repeatedly is the role of services in eDiscovery. It’s easy to forget that buying software does not necessarily solve the problem; service providers and consultants play an important – and vital – role in helping companies to leverage technology. In the case of predictive coding, for example, success depends upon having experts with linguistic experience, deep legal knowledge, and statistics expertise. Not many companies can afford to employ those folks full time. Thus, relying on third parties is likely going to be a best practice for all companies.
I’ll keep this post short and sweet. There are two more days to go and my brain needs some time to process what I learned on Day 1. Also, I want to thank everyone that came out to the eDJ happy hour. The room was packed and the energy was great. I hope everyone had a good time and got their Monday off to a great start.