eDiscovery Solutions Group announced this past week that it has entered into a partnership with Third Coast Consultants to provide litigation readiness, general data retention and management strategies and information security services designed to help corporations and their outside counsel better understand and manage the risks and costs associated with the accelerating volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

Under the terms of the partnership, Third Coast Consultants will provide a wide range of litigation readiness consulting and data retention policy development for eDiscovery Solutions Group clients throughout the United States and South America. In addition, other partners from the eDiscovery Solutions Group consortium will enable Third Coast Consultants to expand its eDiscovery offering with additional eDiscovery consulting, services and technology with support in most of the major metropolitan markets in the US, Canada, Europe and the Far East.

The Company indicated that its partnership with Third Coast Consultants is a major component of an overall strategy to provide a comprehensive solution to corporations worldwide to proactively manage the accelerating volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and associated costs of compliance and eDiscovery. The Company points out that according to a January 9, 2009 article by Debra Logan and John Bace of Gartner, Inc, entitled “Reduce The Cost and Risk of E-Discovery in 2009, “Electronic discovery will be close to the top of many organizations’ IT project agendas in 2009, and will remain important for years to come, regardless of the state of the economy.”

“Given the exponential increase in the volume of ESI within our client base worldwide that is straining every aspect of the information management process, we wanted expand our core offering beyond the standard eDiscovery process as defined within the Electronic Discovery Reference Model as established by Socha and Gelbmann,” stated Charles Skamser, Founder and CEO of eDiscovery Solutions Group. “With a strategic foundation firmly rooted in providing litigation readiness consulting for Rule 26(f) conferences as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) and vision to further assist corporations with a wide range of data retention analysis and policy establishment, Third Coast Consultants will provide the leadership to extend our current eDiscovery offering(s) to be more strategic, proactive and reach beyond the eDiscovery paradigm,” continued Mr. Skamser.

As part of the strategic planning services designed to support the requirements of the FRCP Rule 26(f) conference, Third Coast Consultants coordinates communications and activities between the corporate client and the supporting law firm to analyze and understand: (1) historical and current information preservation processes; (2) corporate content repository structures and locations; (3) the total cost of responding to the potential eDiscovery requests; (4) content accessibility; (5) collection methodologies, and; (6) eDiscovery production recommendations.

“Based upon our membership in the eDiscovery Solutions Group Consortium, once we have completed our Rule 26(f) analysis and made our recommendations for collections and eDiscovery production, we will then be able to offer a comprehensive and seamless solution to deliver everything that our clients require to fulfill our recommendations,” states Alan Blakley, Esq. Senior Consultant, Third Coast Consultants. “As such, we are very pleased to be joining the eDiscovery Solutions Group,” continues Mr. Blakley.

In addition to strategic planning support for the FRCP 26(f) conference, Third Coast Consultants is also equipped to provide data retention analysis and policy development, data security analysis and policy development and general strategic consulting to better understand and manage corporate information.

“One of the main reasons that eDiscovery is so expensive is based on the fact that most corporations are not proactively setting up data retention policies that enable them to easily and cost effectively respond to eDiscovery requests,” states Charles Skamser. “The methodology and technology exists to support these needs and Third Coast Consultants have the expertise to develop the right data retention policies and recommend the most cost effective data archiving technologies to any corporation in the world before the next matter becomes an expensive issue,” continues Mr. Skamser.

With a growing consortium of partners worldwide, eDiscovery Solutions Group offers a broad array of eDiscovery consulting, services and technology along with project management to support the entire eDiscovery lifecycle. Following the eDiscovery processing paradigm of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), eDiscovery Solutions Group has developed an eDiscovery best practices framework that includes consulting, collection, analysis, processing, production, review and presentation.

Within this framework, the eDiscovery Solutions Group can deliver data retention policy, development, data archiving, eSecurity, eCompliance, eDiscovery readiness, strategic planning, implementation support, paper and ESI collection, investigations, expert testimony, data recovery, computer forensics, early case assessment, data analysis, data redundancy management, conceptual search, de-dupe, near de-dupe, scanning, copying, coding, language translation, EDD, TIFF conversion, hosting, on-site, on-shore and off-shore review, legal process outsourcing (LPO), courtroom graphics and presentations, tool training, systems integration and custom solutions.

About Third Coast Consultants

Third Coast Consultants is an international information management consulting firm focusing on litigation readiness, compliance, records management, and data retention strategy. With experienced information management professionals throughout the United States and South America, Third Coast Consultants work with corporations and their outside counsel to analyze, develop best practices and policies and manage Electronically Stored Information (ESI) to support corporate business objectives, governance, compliance and litigation. Our mission is to limit risk and manage costs with solutions that fit the specific needs for each of our clients. To learn more about Third Coast Consultants, please visit http://www.3rdcoastconsultants.com/.

About eDiscovery Solutions Group

eDiscovery Solutions Group is an international consortium of leading independent eDiscovery consultants, eDiscovery consulting firms, regional litigation service providers and best-in-class eDiscovery technology companies that have come together to provide all of the services, consulting and technology necessary to support the entire eDiscovery lifecycle for the legal departments of corporations, the IT departments of corporations that need to support eDiscovery requirements and litigation centric law firms. For more information about eDiscovery Solutions Group, please visit: http://www.ediscoverysolutionsgroup.com/.