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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.

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)?

In our recent post on the winners and losers in the eDiscovery software market, we called out Access Data for seemingly abandoning the desktop license market. That one comment prompted quite a few spirited responses from a number of software providers who wanted to make sure that eDJ was clear that they were still focused on the sale of traditional desktop license software. First and foremost was the Access Data product management team who were happy to dive into their Summation Express product (more on that below) as proof that they were committed to their stand alone customer base. Sherpa Software stepped up to tell us that their primary customer base has always been corporate and law firm IT departments who need a simple solution for search, processing and export of email and native files that can be run from a desktop or workstation. I really appreciated Rich Ruyle’s point about why IPRO continued to develop an enterprise and desktop version of their Eclipse product. The IPRO enterprise version is based on a relational database while the desktop version uses IPRO’s proprietary flat file database. It is clear to eDJ that the market for desktop discovery software is strong and vital.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Mikki Tomlinson. Published: 2012-06-15 08:00:29  A discussion between parties on form of production prior to data production really isn’t that difficult. So, why don’t we do it more often?  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as [...]

Chris La Cour’s second annual Carmel Valley eDiscovery Retreat (CVEDR) has just wrapped up three days of topical, interactive discussions in beautiful, relaxed Monterey, California. Many of us who attended last year’s retreat knew that this event is a perfect opportunity to gently introduce your significant other to the eDiscovery social scene away from the crazy crowds and business intensity of Legal Tech New York. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, kayaking and other attractions kept them happily occupied while we debated questions like, “Are you obligated to disclose Technology Assisted Review (TAR) or other analytics if they are used to make relevance decisions?” It was great to see many familiar top speakers and providers, but I do hope that more entry level corporations and law firms realize how valuable these smaller events are to new eDiscovery professionals. CVEDR tries to avoid ‘death by power point’ and the classic bobble-headed panelists reading from notes with those familiar droning Charlie Brown style teacher voices. Instead, the event has four themes each with five related topic sessions per track. That’s a lot of content and expertise crammed into two and a half days.

The story about Michigan State Police officers collecting forensic snapshots of mobile phones during traffic stops back in April kicked off my long research journey into whether corporate mobile discovery was really feasible. After lengthy interviews with leading experts in mobile phone forensics, I can assure you that a full physical acquisition of your iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry or Android device is just not going to happen during a typical 30 minute custodian interview or a traffic stop. The connectors and communication protocols of mobile devices were not designed for high speed data exports that we have come to expect from enterprise back up systems and disk imaging devices like Logicube. The ‘pipe’ is just too small to copy 8+ GB without taking custody of the device. You can grab the active call log, text messages and other phone elements quickly, but that kind of logical extraction may not suffice to ‘preserve’ your custodian’s ESI in some matters, especially if that device may be the only source of deleted items that are critical to proving your case.

The last week of summer was more hectic than usual because I spent Monday and Tuesday at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference. Unlike other eDiscovery conferences, this had a more casual feel, with lots of attendees in shorts, tee shirts, and flip flops. I had a chance to meet with several vendors and colleagues and three themes kept coming up: technology-assisted review (TAR); the role of managed services in the eDiscovery market; and pricing models.

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Lynn Frances Jae. Published: 2012-09-05 09:00:29  When I went to the demo for Nytrix, I thought that I would be reviewing a new review tool. So, I was surprised when the demo was as much about [...]

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Greg Buckles. Published: 2012-09-07 11:24:59  This year’s International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference was laid back and casual compared to the hectic buzz of Legal Tech New York.   I heard good things about the session speakers [...]

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?