Historical Essays

One of the greatest challenges of implementing and maintaining legal hold and discovery response processes in a corporate environment is balancing those requirements with the needs and goals of the IT department. While we typically see the dichotomy between Legal and IT, there are other key stakeholders that cannot be left out of the mix: Compliance, Records Management and, of course, the Business Client.In order to strike the balance (or at least start moving in that direction) between competing interests, each of these stakeholders must be able to understand the goals, mission, requirements, and needs of the others. To point out the obvious – this requires communication. The problem here is that Legal, Records, Compliance, and IT do not speak the same language. Because every organization is unique, culture is another critical component that cannot be ignored. While the cultural considerations and communication difficulties between the stakeholders may not necessarily be contentious, they can be frustrating and challenging. Luckily, there are ways to work through the cultural and language barriers, such as using drawings/visuals, explaining things in simple terms, and the use of translators.

The astronomical growth in corporate data has driven the practice of eDiscovery away from just the forensic imaging of physical hard drives. The first systems for remote collection of email containers, Office files and other ESI from desktops, laptops and servers appeared in the 2004-2006 time period. I might have been one of the earliest beta testers for Guidance’s Encase Enterprise platform when I was managing the litigation technology for El Paso Corporation back then. Since then, the market has seen a wide variety of new appliances, just-in-time apps and other remote collection technologies. Most appear to promise a ‘push button’ automated collection by IT or Legal with minimal or no impact to working users. Legal sets the scope (date ranges, file types, names or search terms), and the system does all the work in the background. I just wish that it was that easy in the wild west of real world enterprise environments.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2012-01-23 10:30:32  I have spoken to many of our readers over the past several months and have received a great deal of feedback about the eDiscoveryJournal.  The readers appreciate the perspectives of  Greg, Barry, Mikki and I…and they want more.  Because eDJ analysts are working analysts – out in the field experiencing the real thing, we thought the best [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Amber Scorah. Published: 2012-01-24 11:42:27  In the highly litigious oil and gas industry, outside counsel must ensure that they have conducted adequate due diligence in managing and producing electronic evidence.  The line of transparency and privilege is a difficult one to walk.In part one of this two-part interview, Sarah Jane Gillett, Partner at Hall Estill, gives an overview of the [...]

The eDiscovery year tends to begin with a bang at the LegalTech Conference in New York (LTNY). LTNY 2011 promoted some pragmatic ideas such as managing eDiscovery as a process and taking control of Information Governance (IG), while also hinting at forthcoming heat around “the Cloud” and predictive coding. If my pre-briefings from vendors this week are any indication, LTNY 2012 will feature similar issues, albeit flavored a bit differently to taste.

As most of us are getting ready to brave the cold and crowds of LTNY 2012, I received sad news that Ursula Talley passed away last night while fighting recently diagnosed cancer. As the VP of Marketing for StoredIQ, Ursula was the outward face of StoredIQ and a key player in the platform’s evolution since 2007. I always enjoyed working with Ursula, first as a Symantec business partner during my Product Manager days and then later as an analyst client. I last visited with Ursula at her October StoredIQ Industry Advisory Board and was lucky enough to get there early for a talk before round table kicked off. She will be missed and I encourage everyone who knew her to raise a glass to her memory and to appreciate the relationship opportunities that our business and life presents us.