Are You Playing the eDiscovery Telephone Game?
The inFusion 12 conference next week has me thinking about the differences between the platform and point product approaches to in house corporate eDiscovery. Preparing slides and panelist questions for my sessions brought one challenge of the traditional eDiscovery relay race into focus for me. The obvious performance and strategic advantages to a centralized corporate platform include early direct access to ESI in the wild, single instance collection storage, shared indexes, cross matter designations and universal chain of custody. Recouping these advantages usually requires a significant investment in the classic maturity triad; people, process and technology. ILTA booth displays clearly demonstrated that providers are investing in workflow and collaboration features in the attempt to be the primary eDiscovery interface for their customers. So what pain point are customers feeling? The ubiquitous EDRM diagram answered that question for me. Created in 20XX, this model gave the nascent eDiscovery market a common vocabulary and lifecycle explanation when most counsel were still printing email and office documents for hard copy review. I missed that first year’s project, but gladly contributed to the expanding body of projects as the scope and scale of eDiscovery challenges exploded. The connectors between EDRM phases clearly demonstrate the traditional eDiscovery ‘telephone game’ where ESI was collected, processed and transferred between distinct teams. We all know the danger of passing a simple message around the camp fire, now imagine how that natural distortion is amplified through transformation of formats, load files and verbal instructions. So are you still playing this game?