Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2010-08-04 11:54:56 eDiscovery has, in many ways, made it to the mainstream. Thanks to email mismanagement and lack of corporate ethics, our market is in the news on a virtually daily basis. It therefore surprises some that so few organizations have taken significant measures to address eDiscovery. I did an informal poll of some clients to understand why and got some interesting responses. I phrased the question, “what is the greatest pain your organization feels related to eDiscovery?” Here are some of the answers:
- The volume of information to review
- Insufficient budget
- Lack of respect for litigation support
- Cost of preservation
- Difficulty finding high-quality technical personnel
- Volume of information existing in the organization
- Infrastructure challenges within a subsidiary division
For the 15 or so clients I pinged on this issue, cost and IT issues were the major pains. The cost issue exists throughout the eDiscovery spectrum – it’s expensive to collect information, preserve it, process, and review it. Interestingly, I also asked whether the organizations treat eDiscovery costs as operational or capital expenses and there was a 50/50 split between the two. My assumption is that the capital expense group has shifted eDiscovery responsibility to IT and is in the process of implementing technology solutions as a way to address costs. The operational expense group likely keeps eDiscovery budgets with legal and addresses costs on a matter-by-matter basis.Experienced eDiscovery professionals can take heart – organizations know that they need more help from experts that have been through eDiscovery before. As organizations take eDiscovery more seriously, the demand for experienced professionals will increase. We are already seeing this begin to happen (see The Cowen Group website for more info on hiring trends). It’s clear, however, that maturity is growing slowly. The aforementioned “lack of respect for litigation support” indicates that too many organizations view eDiscovery as an itch that needs to be scratched rather than a strategic priority. Smart organizations know that good eDiscovery practices will actually feed initiatives that are typically thought of as more value-add, e.g. content management, business process management. I’ve opined about this for too long, but I’ll say it again – good information management programs are driven by information governance side of the plate.Are you feeling pains in eDiscovery? Let us know and comment away….