Essays

A client recently asked me what kinds of themes will dominate this year’s Legal Tech show. In an earlier post, Expectations for LegalTech 2011, I pointed out some of what I think we’ll see at the show, but what I didn’t do in the last post was address what I think will be the overall theme in 2001 – a focus on the practice of eDiscovery. Yes, I believe we are now actually moving up the maturity curve and discussions will focus on real issues and how real solutions to problems. There will still be a lot of hype around issues du jour, but that hype will take a back seat to the very real case studies that many companies are now willing to talk about.

It’s been a busy first day at LegalTech. Between running around the floor, taking vendor meetings, and try to say hello to everyone I know, they day has flown by. As I sit in my hotel room, I can’t help but wrestle with the feeling of a bit of a letdown on day one of LegalTech.

If my first day at LegalTech2011 was a bit of a let-down, Day 2 saw enough of a recovery to make me feel better about the industry. Don’t get me wrong – I still lament the fact that we have a long way to go. I guess I’m just naturally impatient, when instead I should be glad that this industry keeps us all employed. The big messages of the day were more along the pragmatic lines that I like: managing discovery as a process; taking control of information governance. Unfortunately, the information governance messages don’t all have a lot of meat behind them.

LegalTech Day 1 was a bit disappointing, LegalTech Day 2 was an improvement, and LegalTech Day 3 left me with a much better taste in my mouth. Reflecting back on the show, there were some very positive signs for the market. Vendors reported great booth traffic and, more importantly, talk of real purchasing budgets. As the show went on, there was more real talk about managing eDiscovery as a business process and the business intelligence necessary to make process management smooth and efficient. And thankfully, there was less hype about ECA and the could this time around (though I did sense some cynicism about the fact that everyone was talking about predictive coding).

Sometimes, the best buzz at an event is whispered under the radar. It even takes a couple of days for those whispers to come together, get processed by the brain, and become a coherent thought. Such is the case with LegalTech NY 2011. Now several days removed from the show and the litany of meetings over three days, some new thoughts are bubbling in my brain and I’m wondering if we are watching some eDiscovery phoenixes rise from the ashes.

In some ways I feel like I missed out on parts of Legal Tech NY 2011. My focus this year was to fit in as many roadmap briefings as possible. The sheer scale and audience focus of LTNY has forced providers to plan major product releases and announcements around the show. Product managers would ask me, “Didn’t you see our press release?” Even if I saw it, there were so many in the eDJ search queue that I could not remember them all. So instead of keynotes, sessions, panels or even the exhibition floor, I spent virtually all of my time hearing about the very latest products, features and where the providers think that eDisovery is going this year. With so many briefings, I am going to stick to short summaries and high points. There were quite a few providers who did not have a coherent message or any new functionality significant enough to mention. On with the fun.

Continuing my high level take-aways from my roadmap briefings at LegalTech NY 2011. Predictive coding was one of the hot topics at this show, but it seemed to mean something different to every provider. There is enough confusion around the issue to merit a solid research topic for eDJ in the upcoming months. I know that The eDiscovery Institute is looking to do a comparative research project on predictive coding in 2011-2012, so we can look forward to some hard numbers going into next year from them. On to the provider updates:

We did a lot of roadmap briefings in New York. This should wrap up the companies that I felt had something interesting to present. Wave software recently acquired the solo product, iFramework, to add legal hold notices and matter workflow to Trident. The new Wave Software Solution platform should be able to better manage and synchronize multiple sites. Wave is in line with the hold management trend that emerged at the show for platforms looking to add easy functionality. AccessData and Guidance are examples of collection platforms that have added legal hold notices to their latest releases. Returning to Wave, they continue to sell primarily to firms, but say that they are starting to make consistent sales growth to corporations. Wave is betting on the decline of Tiffs and is ‘staying native’ for the time being.

The hope is that 2011 is a watershed year in our industry. We plan to be there, writing about things that matter most to eDiscovery professionals. That’s why we need your feedback on the research we have underway. Let us know if the topics matter to you, or if there are topics we’re missing that you would like to see research on

One of the things we do as analysts is take inquiries from readers, typically either in a half hour call or via an email response. Recently, a good inquiry came in, but there was no contact information to send an answer to, so I thought it would be a good idea to answer it here (with the hope that the answer gets to the person that had the question). The question read, “If we have a corporate email solution that strips attachments from emails and replaces them with download links, what are our e-discovery responsibilities? Do we need to be able to produce the attachment, or just the email with the links?”