Essays

Now that my full research paper is complete and available, I wanted to share some highlights. Just yesterday I had another GC client tell me that their IT department wanted to rely on their upcoming upgrade to Exchange 2010 to respond to discovery requests. Microsoft has added some good new features, but I would not want to try to defend their use against any kind of adverse scrutiny. So let’s talk about the new ‘Discovery Search’ interface. First and foremost, this is basically the old administrative multi-mailbox search within the OutlookWebApp. The search name and criteria are written to a database table along with the user, date, size estimate and some keyword statistics. The last is a good feature that was undoubtably driven by a customer request to support keyword negotiations. Here is a look at the landing page:

Keeping track of eDiscovery decisions and untangling their relative scope, merit and potential applicability is not easy, even with eDiscoveryJournal’s search engines watching the web. Gibson Dunn has published their 2010 Year-End Electronic Discovery and Information Law Update covering 323 decisions, up over 60% from the 2009 eDiscovery decisions (200 cases). Besides calling out the report as a good resource, I wanted to comment on some of the statistics and specific cases.

Legal Tech NY 2011 is less than a week away. It just so happens that we launched eDJ at LTNY 2010, so we have been working hard on some new tools. We have completely rewritten my old eDiscovery Application Matrix and transformed it into the eDJ Tech Matrix. The most noticeable immediate change is our new capability to compare individual applications or features across entire company offerings. The eDiscovery market is still relatively young and it is dominated by start-ups with a single software offering. However, we have seen acquisitions by global technology companies such as Autonomy, EMC, Iron Mountain and IBM. That means you might want to see how an individual product compares AND then see all the features offered by a company. Up till this point, the roughly 100 applications in the Tech Matrix had been submitted exclusively by users and the providers.

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: