Essays

In our piece earlier this week on the pool of winners and losers in the eDiscovery software market, we made some mistakes and omissions. The mistakes we can eliminate in the future with better editorial processes (we are a growing, learning organization like everyone else). The omissions will happen from time to time, especially in a market with so many small yet innovative vendors. It is a constant challenge to keep up with the complex offering of the large software providers in addition to the many point solutions that exits. Thankfully, we have readers that keep us on our toes and remind us when we make a mistake or forget to include all the relevant players.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Steve Markey. Published: 2012-05-29 09:00:01  This past week I was at the Business of the Cloud conference in Dallas, TX and sat next to Adam Swidler, a senior manager at Google.  He went on to educate me about Google Vault and their retention functionality.      And, as I sat there playing around on my iPad with this new service (an improvement from [...]

Technology Assisted Review (TAR) has dominated our recent briefing sessions with providers and consumers alike. Consumers want eDJ to clarify the terminology, technology and market hype surrounding recent cases. Providers have expressed their frustration with the portrayal of TAR as some kind of ‘Easy Button’ that will magically reduce your review expense by 95%. Really. We are hearing second hand stories like, “But VendorX says his system only needs to train with 5%.” Early TAR innovators like DiscoverReady’s CEO Jim Wagner long ago understood that, “It’s not the technology. It’s the people and process.” That can be a complicated message for a relatively unsophisticated consumer who reads blogger headlines instead of the actual transcripts. Discovery and review cease to be easy or routine as the volume and composition of potential collections exceed the ability of a single reviewer to manually code every item. Beyond simple relevance the additional complexities of privilege in TAR keep coming up in our briefings.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2012-05-30 09:00:33  I was in New York City last week for some meetings and to attend the UBIC seminar at the lovely Harvard Club in midtown.  UBIC has been on my radar for awhile since they are an Asian company trying to enter the US market.  I have a personal interest in international data privacy rules and the [...]

Do you file your critical email in folders or just search for what you need? Filer or finder does not matter until your company decides to clean up its digital landfills. Records management sounds easy at first. Users designate actual business records and some system expires (deletes) non-record communications and loose Office files after an acceptable time for business use. Microsoft introduced Managed Folders for Outlook 2007 to support this exact process. Although they could have replicated the same functionality into normal file shares (directories), they chose to nudge the market to migrate loose content to Sharepoint for many reasons. The entire ‘foldering’ concept is dependent on overburdened users taking the time and effort to make active decisions on every email they send or receive. Many users have given up trying to file email or files into the appropriate folders and instead just rely on Outlook/Windows search (weak) or aftermarket desktop search engines like X1 or ISYS to find items when they need them. So how does a company minimize user (and productivity) impact while implementing a selective retention initiative (i.e. stop keeping everything)?

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Amber Scorah. Published: 2012-06-04 12:55:01  The best way to avoid costly disputes over the adequacy of eDiscovery processes and collections is to build a defensible litigation hold business process.One means of doing this is by leveraging a company’s information security capabilities.  Security risk assessment procedures can be used as an aid in building a defensible process around the execution of [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2012-06-06 12:37:48  I recently spoke with Eric Mandel, National eDiscovery Counsel with Zelle Hofmann in Minneapolis, about the EDRM Model Code of Conduct (MCoC), which was officially published late last year.   The EDRM Model Code of Conduct project was initiated in May 2007 by many EDRM participants who were concerned about the lack of ethical direction for those [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2012-06-07 09:16:53  eDiscovery events usually evoke images of packed exhibit halls, panels of guru bobble heads and offsite gatherings of social butterflies. I love and hate the iconic February migration to chilly New York. That is why Barry Murphy and I jumped at the chance to contribute to last year’s Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVEDR). Little did [...]

This week, I attended and spoke at InnoXcell’s Asia eDiscovery Exchange. Jeffrey Teh at InnoXcell gathered a great group of speakers and an audience of active eDiscovery and investigatory professionals. Conferences are great when the audience asks hard questions and the attendees here certainly weren’t afraid to speak up. It is great to see the interest level in eDiscovery and Information Governance (IG) rising in Asia.

When working with eDiscovery professionals, eDJ analysts encounter a common question: which education and certification programs are worthwhile for advancing my career? It is a question for which there is not an easy, straightforward answer. First, the practice of eDiscovery is just starting to gain some maturity and training and certification in the market is relatively new. That creates an opportunity for educational programs and certifications to potentially thrive – and because of that, many programs have come to the market. In order to provide an answer to our clients, eDJ seeks to understand the available eDiscovery and related information governance education, certification and training programs.