Essays

Matters like Pippins v. KPMG LLP, ---F.R.D.---, 2012 WL 370321 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 3, 2012) provide a unique opportunity to discuss eDiscovery, and many of the considerations involved. How do the seven Zubulake factors apply? How much data constitutes an undue burden? Can predictive coding be trusted, and at what point is human interaction required for review? Who is going to do all of the work? These are only a few of the questions brought to light by this matter. Though the Pippins case alone does not resolve any of these questions, it does offer a platform for discussion.

Big Data is a new paradigm for many professionals, and it is relevant for eDiscovery professionals as it is a new artifact to consider when pondering the collection and discoverability of content. Oracle defines Big Data as an aggregation of data from three sources, which include: traditional (structured data), sensory (log data, metadata), and social (social media)1 data. Big Data is often stored in non-relational, distributed databases using new technology paradigms, such as NoSQL (Not only Structured Query Language).

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2012-02-24 08:00:12  The commentary to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure directs parties to discuss issues related to ESI. In 2008 the Sedona Conference® published the Cooperation Proclamation .  Since that time, more than 100 members of the judiciary – both at the federal and state court levels – have formally endorsed the Cooperation [...]

Our LegalTech briefing schedule was pretty hectic and I did not want to drag you through all minutia and marketing messages (BIGGER-FASTER-EASIER). So I will try to make this easy to scan and only dive into details when there is real differentiated value.Symantec/Clearwell – This was our first combined briefing since Symantec acquired Clearwell last July. We had a lot of tough questions for the teams and were pleased to hear how these market leaders are tackling the real challenges around integration of technologies, sales, marketing, services and channel partners. The next major version of Clearwell should provide Enterprise Vault (EV) customers an advanced option to the venerable Discovery Accelerator product for direct search of the EV archives. Bi-directional application and management of legal holds within EV is further down the roadmap, but the Clearwell development team has a good track record for rapid dev cycles. Recent calls to traditional Symantec system integrator channel partners such as GlobaNet revealed multiple Clearwell certified consultants ready to support combined EV-Clearwell-LiveOffice implementations. That is a good sign that Symantec’s channel partners are engaged with these merging information governance-eDiscovery product lines. We look forward to seeing how Clearwell’s huge eDiscovery channel partners transition from volume based hosting sales to selling enterprise licenses and managed services.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Harris. Published: 2012-02-28 02:00:58  Are you facing a federal subpoena?  The Joint Electronic Technology Working Group (JETWG) recently published a framework for handling eDiscovery in federal criminal cases “where the volume and/or nature of the ESI produced as discovery significantly increases the complexity of the case.”  The framework is broken across three parts: recommendations, strategies and a checklist.  The [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2012-02-28 09:00:09  The other day I happened to be poking around Facebook to see if I could modify some setting.  I had not been to the Admin section of my Facebook account for some time and it was eye opening to see the different ways to involve Facebook into more aspects of my life.  Pretty soon I'll be [...]

Wrapping up my quick takeaways, I want to say that I really enjoyed the upbeat attitude at LTNY 2012. It was a great show for us and the follow up demos, proposals and new development work has kept us hopping. So here are the last of my briefs, with apologies to all of the providers who did not manage to get time with us or who could not deliver a memorable message to pass on. kCura – The latest release (version 7.3) may feel a bit retro to any of us who remember having to install 20+ applications to every Discovery Cracker workstation in order to TIFF collections. As it was explained to eDJ, the new Relativity Native Imaging feature is optional, only requires 16 applications for full support and is intended to improve the quality and performance of productions. My own take away is that this is the foundation for processing native collections, which is the next logical step in growing Relativity from a review point solution to a broader eDiscovery platform. We followed up with several major Relativity service partners who confirmed our theory. So the real question is whether this will blunt the meteoric rise of kCura’s channel or simply launch them into broader corporate sales. We have seen other market leaders stumble and lose momentum when making this transition, so kCura should be watched closely over the next year.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Amber Scorah. Published: 2012-03-01 09:00:42  Creating a solid in-house eDiscovery team is indeed a big undertaking, and in last week’s post we talked about how to determine which procedures should be handled internally vs. externally, and some good strategies for getting cross-department collaboration.Another challenge is determining how far the in-house team will take discovery.  It’s often a question of resources.What [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Sarah Hankins. Published: 2012-03-06 08:00:00  Throughout the evolution of eDiscovery in the marketplace, service providers have struggled to meet client expectations from a cost standpoint.  In order to accurately estimate the cost of a project in the absence of a flat fee model, service providers required a certain amount of information up front as discussed in Jason Velasco's pricing article [...]

The value promise of ‘black box’ predictive coding or ‘Easy Button’ review gets marketing departments all excited. So excited that eDJ was inundated with copies of the hearing transcript and opinion of Da Silva Moore v. Publicis Groupe & MSL Group, No. 11 Civ. 1279 (ALC) (AJP) (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2012) along with their interpretations on how this changed the ground rules of eDiscovery. Marketing departments can spin a mountain out of a mole hill. In his final order, Judge Peck pushed back, “To correct the many blogs about this case, initiated by a press release from plaintiffs' vendor – the Court did not order the parties to use predictive coding. The parties had agreed to defendants' use of it, but had disputes over the scope and implementation, which the Court ruled on, thus accepting the use of computer-assisted review in this lawsuit.” Check out Mikki Tomlinson’s interviews with Judge Peck or Conor Crowley’s excellent legal summary for more practical interpretations. The arguments over how you know when your predictive training are ‘good enough’ are worth dissecting. eDJ has been researching the methods of technology assisted review, so I thought it worth extracting some of these key points. Remember that even the vendor experts in this case are representing their technology. Preliminary raw hearing transcripts rarely released to the public and I wonder if the parties are as happy as their vendors about all the publicity. This is a nice glimpse into the fray before the dust has settled on technology assisted review.