This Page

has been moved to new address

The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift

Sorry for inconvenience...

Redirection provided by Blogger to WordPress Migration Service
----------------------------------------------------- Blogger Template Style Name: Snapshot: Madder Designer: Dave Shea URL: mezzoblue.com / brightcreative.com Date: 27 Feb 2004 ------------------------------------------------------ */ /* -- basic html elements -- */ body {padding: 0; margin: 0; font: 75% Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #474B4E; background: #fff; text-align: center;} a {color: #DD6599; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;} a:visited {color: #D6A0B6;} a:hover {text-decoration: underline; color: #FD0570;} h1 {margin: 0; color: #7B8186; font-size: 1.5em; text-transform: lowercase;} h1 a {color: #7B8186;} h2, #comments h4 {font-size: 1em; margin: 2em 0 0 0; color: #7B8186; background: transparent url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-header1.gif) bottom right no-repeat; padding-bottom: 2px;} @media all { h3 { font-size: 1em; margin: 2em 0 0 0; background: transparent url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-header1.gif) bottom right no-repeat; padding-bottom: 2px; } } @media handheld { h3 { background:none; } } h4, h5 {font-size: 0.9em; text-transform: lowercase; letter-spacing: 2px;} h5 {color: #7B8186;} h6 {font-size: 0.8em; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 2px;} p {margin: 0 0 1em 0;} img, form {border: 0; margin: 0;} /* -- layout -- */ @media all { #content { width: 700px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left; background: #fff url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-body.gif) 0 0 repeat-y;} } #header { background: #D8DADC url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-headerdiv.gif) 0 0 repeat-y; } #header div { background: transparent url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/header-01.gif) bottom left no-repeat; } #main { line-height: 1.4; float: left; padding: 10px 12px; border-top: solid 1px #fff; width: 428px; /* Tantek hack - http://www.tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html */ voice-family: "\"}\""; voice-family: inherit; width: 404px; } } @media handheld { #content { width: 90%; } #header { background: #D8DADC; } #header div { background: none; } #main { float: none; width: 100%; } } /* IE5 hack */ #main {} @media all { #sidebar { margin-left: 428px; border-top: solid 1px #fff; padding: 4px 0 0 7px; background: #fff url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-sidebar.gif) 1px 0 no-repeat; } #footer { clear: both; background: #E9EAEB url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-footer.gif) bottom left no-repeat; border-top: solid 1px #fff; } } @media handheld { #sidebar { margin: 0 0 0 0; background: #fff; } #footer { background: #E9EAEB; } } /* -- header style -- */ #header h1 {padding: 12px 0 92px 4px; width: 557px; line-height: 1;} /* -- content area style -- */ #main {line-height: 1.4;} h3.post-title {font-size: 1.2em; margin-bottom: 0;} h3.post-title a {color: #C4663B;} .post {clear: both; margin-bottom: 4em;} .post-footer em {color: #B4BABE; font-style: normal; float: left;} .post-footer .comment-link {float: right;} #main img {border: solid 1px #E3E4E4; padding: 2px; background: #fff;} .deleted-comment {font-style:italic;color:gray;} /* -- sidebar style -- */ @media all { #sidebar #description { border: solid 1px #F3B89D; padding: 10px 17px; color: #C4663B; background: #FFD1BC url(http://www.blogblog.com/snapshot/bg-profile.gif); font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.9; margin: 0 0 0 -6px; } } @media handheld { #sidebar #description { background: #FFD1BC; } } #sidebar h2 {font-size: 1.3em; margin: 1.3em 0 0.5em 0;} #sidebar dl {margin: 0 0 10px 0;} #sidebar ul {list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0;} #sidebar li {padding-bottom: 5px; line-height: 0.9;} #profile-container {color: #7B8186;} #profile-container img {border: solid 1px #7C78B5; padding: 4px 4px 8px 4px; margin: 0 10px 1em 0; float: left;} .archive-list {margin-bottom: 2em;} #powered-by {margin: 10px auto 20px auto;} /* -- sidebar style -- */ #footer p {margin: 0; padding: 12px 8px; font-size: 0.9em;} #footer hr {display: none;} /* Feeds ----------------------------------------------- */ #blogfeeds { } #postfeeds { }

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Status of Early Case Assessment (ECA)

After about 18 months since the term Early Case Assessment (ECA) emerged, it appears that users are beginning to understand that the key to reducing the overall costs of eDiscovery lies wtih reducing the amount of data that eventually has to be produced and reviewed. Also, it appears that eDiscovery vendors have figured out that the ultimate winners in this space will have a comprehensive seamlessly integrated solution that supports either all or at least a major portion of the EDRM model.

However, it also appears that even though costs have come down significantly, the overall cost of eDiscovery is still way too high.

OVERVIEW OF THE MAINSTREAM TOOL MAREKT

Following is an an update on the ECA offerings from "some" more sell known and mainstream vendors in this space:

ClearWell

According to their website, Rated as a "Strong Positive" (highest possible rating given) in Gartner's 2008 E-Discovery MarketScope Report and voted a Top 5 E-Discovery Software Provider by the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann survey, the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform is the first enterprise-class e-discovery solution that manages all legal matters, regulatory inquiries, and corporate investigations in a single application. Leading companies have chosen Clearwell to process, analyze, review, and produce ESI. As a result, they accelerate early case assessments, cull-down data by up to 90%, increase review throughput, reduce movement of data across multiple tools, and improve the defensibility of their electronic discovery process.

However, word on the street is that it still costs between $450 and $550 per GB for ECA and then additional fees to go to production for review. Given the costs of TIFF and other production processing that may be required could push the overall cost of eDiscovery to well over $1,000 per GB. In addition, ClearWell still requires a farily large investment in hardware and software for "someone" in the channel or the ultimate end-user.

CaseCentral
According to the CaseCentral website, CaseCentral the leader in secure, on-demand eDiscovery software for corporate counsel and law firms looking to simplify and take control of eDiscovery, announced in June 2009 the release of the CaseCentral Early Case Assessment (ECA) offering, which is the industry’s first ECA product to seamlessly integrate with active litigation review and production software. CaseCentral’s integrated, multi-purpose eDiscovery review platform enables clients to start with ECA and extend through analysis, review, production and post-production re-use, facilitating collaborative assessments of new case merits and liabilities, application of first pass review, and real-time transfer to active review if required, all at a price point that shatters the current ECA pricing model.

Pricing for CaseCentral early case assessment starts at $10/GB/month or $120k/TB/year, which is two orders of magnitude less than competitive products, enabling clients to cost-effectively consider much larger data sets for ECA during first pass review. CaseCentral ECA pricing also takes away unpredictability making it easier to budget for ECA activities. Contemporary early case assessment tools charge clients a significant premium for perceived value, often starting at $100k/100GB, which equates to $1,000/GB. ECA can be about small data sets (Gigabytes) or about very large data sets (Terabytes) and current pricing discourages or limits the amount of data that can be considered during early case assessment before ultimately culling down the data set to a smaller amount for active review. This approach forces inside and outside counsel to take risks to limit the data set for ECA and active review.

Anacomp
According to an August 25, 2009 press release, Anacomp®, Inc., a leading provider of litigation support and business process services and solutions, today announced the availability of new early case assessment (ECA) services that offer law firms and corporate general counsel (GC) departments the ability to gain early insight into cases, help determine case strategy, and predict, control and minimize the costs, risks and time of electronic discovery. The new services augment Anacomp’s robust portfolio of eDiscovery services, which leverage CaseLogistix®, Anacomp's flagship litigation review platform, and the company’s proven experience in accelerating litigation processes and reducing costs and risks.


Anacomp's ECA services provide the metrics, methods and technologies to empower litigators to make optimal decisions early pertaining to case strategy and budgets. The services include defensible search methodologies to reduce the volume of electronically stored information (ESI) required for review, and the means to slash indexing times and nearly all reprocessing prior to review. The services offer litigators the ability to bring predictable, reasonable costs to electronic data discovery processes, reduce unnecessary capital expenditures, and eliminate spends typically made under tight deadlines or resource constraints.

OVERVIEW TO OTHER TOOLS VENDORS ENTERING THE ECA MARKET

Following is an update on other tools vendors that have entered the ECA space:
Venio Systems
According to their website, Venio Systems is a cutting edge Electronic Discovery software solution created to save legal, government and corporate industries time and money. Venio FPR™ allows forensic units, attorneys and litigation support teams to analyze data, provide an early case assessment, a total case assessment and a first pass review of any size data set. Unlike other E-Discovery management platforms, Venio FPR™ can export to ALL industry standard litigation support applications while providing extensive reporting options.

Based on a cloud computing model, rumor has it that pricing will be consumption based and very agressive thereby putting downward pressure on the rest of the ECA market.

Trial Solutions
It is also rumored that Trial Solutions may be releasing a cloud based (i.e. SaaS) ECA solution that is seamlessly integrated with ImageDepot, its leading Online Review Tool (ORT). It is further rumored that they may also be planning to offer very aggressive consumption based pricing for ECA.

eMag Solutions
According to an August 2009 press release, eMag Solutions, LLC, an international provider of enterprise content management (ECM) and electronic discovery solutions, announced the company will introduce eMag PreVu 3.0, the latest version of eMag's web-based data management portal to sort, search and filter electronically stored information (ESI) as well as manage early stage workflow. eMag PreVu helps customers manage costs and eliminate extraneous processing steps and shorten the time to complete projects.

The introduction of version 3.0 of the eMag PreVu hosted raw data culling application will occur at next week's annual ILTA conference being held at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center near Washington, D.C. August 24-27th.

Early case assessment has become a critical way for organizations and their legal teams to reduce uncertainty around both the costs and management of ESI and e-discovery, while helping them gain a stronger understanding of the nature and scope of the data involved in litigation, data migration, or enterprise content management projects. eMag Solutions has a strong track record of delivering cutting edge tools that help clients achieve great success around data management, and PreVu 3.0 is yet another example of this. eMag PreVu 3.0 allows users to create early stage processing requests to facilitate e-discovery, litigation planning, or ECM to make strategic decisions more timely and effectively.

eMag PreVu 3.0 provides the ability to efficiently cull large data sets prior to loading into an active archive, review tool or other repository, resulting in dramatically reduced review costs. Significant enhancements in PreVu 3.0 include advanced searching options, the ability to group and tag files, increased options for filtering, as well as extensive reporting capabilities.

Another key aspect of PreVu 3.0 is its ability to facilitate cross-border, multi-national collections. Clients are able to utilize the hosted application in conjunction with eMag's UK processing facilities and international on-site services to accommodate international data protection and privacy laws.

earlyCASE
According to a recent press release, Atlanta-based earlyCASE, the leader in advanced early case assessment for Electronically Stored Information (ESI) and eDiscovery, today released filtering and culling capabilities in its market-leading eDiscovery early case assessment software available as Software-as-a-Service “SaaS” from www.earlycase.com. earlyCASE is a SaaS web-based eDiscovery application which uses an on-demand deployment model (runs on your local PC), collects, preserves, analyzes and filters the ESI that your computer can access in-place without the data ever leaving your computer or network.


earlyCASE allows you to quickly and safely collect, organize, understand eDiscovery data, and apply filter / culling rules before it is processed for discovery. It supports Unicode, extracts metadata, generates hash values, detects duplicates, removes known system files and creates a local inventory database of documents and emails. earlyCASE allows users to make informed discovery decisions, easily and quickly cut down the size of data sets through filter and culling rules before going into the meet and confer, discovery processing and document review.

In the past, preserving, collecting, analyzing and filtering electronically stored information had to be handled in separate steps. earlyCASE can safely collect ESI, preserve all metadata, seamlessly analyze and filter the ESI to deliver rapid early case assessment and reduction in the amount of data being processed and reviewed. With the release today of the latest version of earlyCASE, you can create filter rules and see in real time the reduction in size and counts these rules have, then use earlyCASE to quickly separate the filtered documents, files and emails from the collection all without any additional software or costs.

earlyCASE is offered in three versions, a Basic (FREE) version, a Professional version for a small flat rate charge, regardless of the amount of data you analyze, and an enterprise edition. The Basic version offers 40+ high-quality eDiscovery reports, details the expanded sizes and counts of the data, estimates your processing and review budget and provides a long list of detailed as well as summary reports. With the Professional version, duplicate files and emails are identified, Lotus Notes files are processed, Known System Files are identified, EnCase images are processed. earlyCASE Professional also provides the ability to set filtering rules can be applied to reduce the amount of data, a 26(f) report for meet and confer is available to help clients reduce legal risk exposure by offering a necessary view of the legal case information—custodians, context, third parties, and more. earlyCASE provides you the tools and results to best understand, define and memorialize the ESI going into the meet and confer. Duplicate document detection and removal, removal of known system files, elimination of files outside the dates of interest, container processing (zip, rar, arc), Lotus Notes NSF’s, EnCase images and numerous Filtering options are the primary reasons most people use the Professional version of earlyCASE.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Monday, August 24, 2009

Six Sigma and eDiscovery

Having spent most of my career providing the Global 500 with leading edge technology to improve their business processes and reduce costs, I have been intimately involved with Six Sigma for many years.

Now that I am focusing on brining leading edge technology and associated services to eDiscovery, I would imagine that once again I will be relying on Six Sigma and lean Six Sigma as the foundation to improve litigation processes and reduce eDiscovery costs.

Granted, terms like Six Sigma, Business Process Improvement (BPI) and Centers of Exellence (COEs) will make most litigator's eyes glaze over. However, now that the trend is clear that eDiscovery is moving to the enterprise, Six Sigma is alreay a well established practice and therefore applying it to eDiscovery will not seem at all odd or out of place.

As a place to start, I am planning to conduct an informal survey of players ni the eDiscovery market to determine the current status of Six Sigma utilization and any plans for futture use. As such, any input will be welcome and greatly appreciated.

Labels: , , , , ,

eDiscovery Solutions Group Partners with Third Coast Consultants


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/.

Labels: , , , ,