Essays

Relevance and privilege review dominates the expanding cost of eDiscovery. Controlling that cost has focused innovation to create Technology Assisted Review (TAR) software and service offerings, but the various TAR approaches can be applied to almost every stage of the eDiscovery lifecycle. The trend to consolidate point products into broader eDiscovery platforms provides a pathway to spread TAR methods beyond review. Our recent briefing with FTI on their Ringtail 8.2 release is a good example how a mature product can leverage clustering, machine learning and other analytics to increase quality and efficiency across matter and global workflows. Like several other solutions including CaseCentral, Ringtail 8.2 implements a unified, Single Instance Storage (SIS) repository that gives their analytic data cubes and mines access to collections that span multiple matters. These global analytics support ECA, culling and QA scenarios upstream and downstream from the actual review.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2012-07-10 11:05:18  Legal hold has been a hot topic in litigation since the Zubulake case rocked the discovery world in 2003.  Since that time there have been a number of products developed to manage the legal hold notice process.  I recently had the opportunity to review several of these applications via a Request for Information (“RFI”) project [...]

At the recent ECI event in Chicago, David Kessler (Fullbright & Jaworski Partner) made an interesting observation that 95% of all civil cases end in settlement while moderating our discussion on project managers in eDiscovery. That ratio was a bit lower than the typical discovery assessment metrics from my Fortune 500 clients, but it peaked my curiosity to see if real published study data existed. I found numerous unattributed comments purporting the rate to be 95-97% cases closed via settlement vs. trial, but the best recent study was a Florida Bar Special Committee report on the declining rate of jury trials. Even if you assume that the trial disposition rates below only correspond to the 11th Circuit and the Florida County courts, the trend is obvious. That 95-97% settlement rate was appropriate 25 years ago, but over 99% of all current cases now are disposed without trial. Despite that low trial rate, a much larger percentage of filed civil litigation will require some or full discovery effort prior to settlement. My question is, does the overwhelming settlement rate discourage litigants from investing in a thorough, defensible eDiscovery process?

Get ready for it folks – there is another “term” battle brewing in the eDiscovery market. Like the debate over technology-assisted review (TAR), computer-assisted review (CAR), and predictive coding (PC), there is a similar one between defensible disposition, defensible deletion, and active expiration. Hopefully, the terminology debate will take a back seat to the real story, which is that companies can reduce costs and decrease risks by proactively getting rid of unnecessary information.

Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) stands to change the way traditional linear legal review functions in a significant way. The fallout of this change will impact corporations, law firms, legal technology and service providers, and eDiscovery professionals everywhere. What will that change look like? There are plenty of ideas – fewer contract reviewers, more high-margin TAR specialists, greater reliance on managed services – but it is not clear just yet which path will be the road more traveled.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2012-07-18 08:53:48   My research on mobile device discovery has led me to review existing surveys on corporate policies, practices and trends. Across multiple surveys, the statistics agree that the vast majority of businesses now allow the use of personal mobile devices, otherwise known as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. Apple appears to have started [...]

The main message from attendees at The Cowen Group (TCG) Leadership Breakfast in New York last Thursday is that technology-assisted review (TAR) is a game-changing, disruptive force in eDiscovery and information governance (IG). TAR has the potential to change the way that law is practiced, according to one distinguished panelist. To harness the power of TAR, however, the legal industry must change. Instead of slowly adopting new technologies and ways of conducting business, the industry must begin experimenting with innovative solutions in order to keep pace with the demands of corporate clients.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Lynn Frances Jae. Published: 2012-07-24 11:27:21  I attended the Executive Counsel Institute’s “eDiscovery for the Corporate Market” conference last week. The event was quite educational, with 26 presenters including Gene Eames, Director, Search & Analytics Legal Division of Pfizer, Daniel Kulakofsky, Managing Counsel-Director E-Discovery of Travelers and several other members of corporate legal departments. The inclusion of corporate legal people [...]

In the wake of our article on the winners and losers in the eDiscovery software market, a client recently suggested to us that the software giants are not yet the best landing spots for eDiscovery software vendors. The impetus for this observation was news from two vendors – Symantec and HP – that software acquisitions in the eDiscovery market had underperformed. The revenue from Symantec’s Clearwell business was less than expected in calendar Q1 2012. HP’s executives admitted on their last earnings call that the Autonomy license revenue had a significant decline year-over-year.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2012-07-27 09:23:38  Just days before trial, The Honorable Paul S. Grewel granted in part Apple’s Motion for Adverse Inference Jury Instruction against defendant Samsung.  According to the Order filed on Wednesday, July 25, 2012, “At issue is whether Samsung took adequate steps to avoid spoliation after it should have reasonably anticipated this lawsuit and elected not to [...]