The Dangers of Do-It-Yourself eDiscovery: A Warning to Lawyers and Business Leaders.

The goal of eDiscovery is to acquire relevant electronically stored information (ESI) and admit relevant and useful ESI into evidence. While ESI may be used for other purposes, such depositions or settlement negotiations, if the ESI is not gathered properly, it will not be admissible into evidence. Such a result would waste both the time and cost expended to obtain the ESI. Lawyers should not gather ESI personally and the person who does the collection should be qualified to do such work. Otherwise, the ESI may not be admissible and significant damage may be done to a party’s case.

The Lawyer as a Witness. Lawyers who gather ESI directly face several dilemmas and dangers. One of the largest concerns is the lawyer becoming a witness in the case. American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7 prohibits the lawyer from acting as the lawyer in the case and being a necessary witness. Rule 3.7 states:

(a) A lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless:
(1) the testimony relates to an uncontested issue;
(2) the testimony relates to the nature and value of legal services rendered in the case; or
(3) disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.

(b) A lawyer may act as advocate in a trial in which another lawyer in the lawyer's firm is likely to be called as a witness unless precluded from doing so by Rule 1.7 or Rule 1.9.

The comment 2 to Rule 3.7 states:
The tribunal has proper objection when the trier of fact may be confused or misled by a lawyer serving as both advocate and witness. The opposing party has proper objection where the combination of roles may prejudice that party's rights in the litigation. A witness is required to testify on the basis of personal knowledge, while an advocate is expected to explain and comment on evidence given by others. It may not be clear whether a statement by an advocate-witness should be taken as proof or as an analysis of the proof.

In the D.C. Bar in Ethics Opinion No. 228 expanded upon the purpose of this rule:

Beyond the confusion that this combination of roles might create, the rule is justified on at least three other bases: (1) it is necessary to prevent the possibility that, in addressing the jury, the lawyer will appear to vouch for his own credibility; (2) it will prevent the difficult situation that occurs when an opposing counsel must cross-examine a lawyer-adversary and seek to impeach his credibility; and (3) the rule also will prevent the implication that the testifying lawyer is distorting the truth for his/her client’s benefit.

Citing Culebras Enterprises Corp. v. Rivera-Rios, 846 F.2d 94, 99 (1st Cir. 1988), citing Bottaro v. Hatton Associates, 680 F.2d 895, 897 (2d Cir. 1982); International Electronics v. Flanzer, 527 F.2d 1288, 1294 (2d Cir. 1975); MacArthur v. Bank of New York, 524 F. Supp. 1205, 1208 (S.D.N.Y. 1981).

Authentication of ESI. Any person who gathers ESI must be able to authenticate and lay a foundation for that ESI. “Authentication” simply means that the person called to admit the ESI must prove that the ESI is what he or she claims it is. That person must be able to lay a foundation for the ESI.

To authenticate the evidence, the person called to testify may need to establish the following, depending upon what is sought to be introduced and the issues raised:

How the ESI was gathered.
Where the ESI was stored.
Who had access to it.
Establish the chain-of-custody
Whether other ESI was also located.
Whether a thorough search was conducted.
Whether the ESI sought to be introduced was altered from its original state.
Other essential details.

Who should be entrusted with the responsibility to gather the ESI? Who should take the witness stand to testify at trial? Certainly, the law firm’s paralegal, secretary and investigator should not conduct the ESI search unless that individual is qualified to establish the above-listed details and will lay the appropriate foundation for introduction of the ESI.

When gathering evidence it is usually not clear whether the evidence will be challenged when the party seeks to introduce it. Thus, the evidence should be gathered in a thoughtful manner that will withstand future challenges.

If ESI is gathered improperly and a party is unable to lay an appropriate foundation to authenticate the ESI, that evidence will not be admitted into evidence. This could be devastating to the case, depending on how critical the ESI was.

Just as experts are hired to provide opinions and establish essential facts, experts should be used to gather ESI. Ideally, the expert will have both technical are needed to search for, gather and introduce ESI.

The person who gathers ESI should also be a good witness. Parties must generally take witnesses as they come. There is very little control over who witnessed particular facts. However, when gathering evidence, parties are given the opportunity to select the witness. So, there should be some assurance that the person who gathers ESI will be a competent witness who can be depended upon. This witness may end up being the critical witness in the case.

Do-It-Yourself eDiscovery Software Tools. Some eDiscovery software tools are marketed directly to lawyers and this is clearly a terrible idea. A lawyer should not gather ESI if he wants to remain the attorney in the case or introduce the ESI into evidence. If the lawyer chooses to gather ESI, he may even be committing malpractice. Do-it-yourself software tools were intended to reduce the cost of eDiscovery and place direct control over the ESI in the hands of lawyers and business leaders. However, they may have unintended consequences.

The lawyer cannot use these tools to gather ESI or she may be disqualified as the lawyer in the case. Only a person qualified to testify at trial should use these tools to gather ESI. Ideally, this person would be an expert.
Thought must be given to who and how ESI should be gathered before it is obtained. A little bit of caution early will be rewarded later.

Labels: ABA, aba model rule 3.7, Authentication, Cerifications, Chain of Custody, eDiscovery, ediscovery competence, eDiscovery Consultants, EDRM, ESI, Legal

posted by Gene Petty @ 5:04 PM 0 Comments

Riding the Wave of Early Case Assessment

This past weekend, I finally emerged from a rather lengthy project and therefore I now have a bit of time to get back to my  Blog.  At the top of my list was the desire to comment on an article entitled, “Riding the Waves of Early Case Assessment” published on April 26, 2011  on the Law.com. The author, George Rudoy is CEO of Integrated Legal Technology, a legal technology and services consultancy, based in New York, does an excellent job of framing some of the issues surrounding Early Case Assessment (ECA) and adds some biting yet very true commentary on some of the early technology winners.  My only real complaint with the article is that he didn’t solicit any input from me (just kidding).  I guess that I will need to invite him to join my LinkedIn network and also join my Early Case Assessment Association Group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1827179&mostPopular=&trk=tyah).

First of all, Early Case Assessment (ECA) is both a very clever marketing term that has no doubt propelled vendors such as Clearwell way beyond the point where they should have been had it not been for the term (BTW – Clearwell’s success will be studied at Harvard business school in the years to come as an excellent example of how to successfully position a product in an emerging market).  On the other hand and as many have pointed out to me as I have ranted on about the fact that ECA is actually a technology, the practice of ECA (whether you call it that or not) has been around for many years and is nothing new to the experienced and blooded litigator.  I concede that fact.  However, I also believe that technology now exists (actually has existed) for many years that can in fact advance the practice of ECA.  It is just not being applied yet to what I would call the eDiscovery subset of the Information Governance market.

I have been an enterprise technology junkie and serial entrepreneur for many years and therefore I have an excellent understanding of what technology exists and what it can and cannot accomplish.  And, since entering the litigation services/eDiscovery market about five years ago full time, I have been continuously amazed at the lack of the “market’s” interest in utilizing very pertinent and established technologies from other enterprise types markets (e.g.  Information Governance, BPM, etc.).  In addition, I had the great fortune of working with Dr. Herb Roitblat several years ago and learned more about semantic search and related technology such as predictive coding than was probably necessary for any normal person (even a technology junkie such as myself).  Having this knowledge base as a foundation, I have developed what would the market would consider to be a fairly radical concept of ECA and where it fits in the EDRM.  However, after reading George’s article, I think that I may have some company.

Without going into a long drawn out description of where ECA technology fits in the EDRM, just let me state that I believe we should be following an iterative process (i.e. like the Agile software development model) where we are constantly analyzing the entire dataset to determine what we should be looking for, how we are doing, risk assessments, etc.  And, today’s available technology lends itself to this approach.  Further, as we move more and more ESI to the Cloud, this approach becomes even more practical, less expensive and much more productive. In the coming weeks, I hope to set aside some time to address my model in more detail.  So, stay tuned. 

The full text of George Rudoy’s article is as follows:

Can you really conduct early case assessment, or is it simply a fancy name for a more traditional indexing and culling model?  What exactly is "early case assessment" (ECA)?

While working on a project for one of my corporate clients, I had to delve deeper into this question and reached out to a few of my old industry friends and colleagues -- Gyorgy Pados of Capital Legal; Richard Cohen, of Renew Data; Rick Lutkus and Lori Chavez of Seyfarth Shaw; Michelle Mahoney of Mallesons Stephen Jaques; and Jonathan Maas of Ernst & Young --  to gain a better perspective on the widely debated phenomenon.

As the novelty of the ECA concept starts to wear off and more and more practical evaluation and understanding develops, it’s time to reflect on the positioning of ECA on the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) framework. Is it mature enough yet to be used in the best way -- and embraced?  What capabilities are properly framed "ECA"?

The legal technology industry uses ECA in various ways. ECA could refer to appliance, software, or software as a service to quickly collect/index, de-duplicate, and search electronically stored information (ESI) to provide fast analysis of its content. The concept is a platform or service to facilitate a quick fly-over of the ESI collection to gather key reports of data make-up, information, and communication histograms patterns, concepts and themes, keyword analysis, and evaluations. Most ECA products provide dynamic probing and data-evaluation facilities to arrive at the relevant ESI, very much like the traditional fact-finding early-case-evaluation approach to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the case. But is this the right way to define ECA, or should it mean something different, such as analytic capabilities prior to collection or indexing of data?

The premise of early case assessment is to give legal teams the ability to conduct up-front, fast, intelligent data gathering, with probative queries on the dataset to reduce it to a relevant universe that can be assessed.  Legal teams have a need to see "what they got" faster than what traditional EDD services typically can provide. 

Let us consider two often-mentioned vendors that offer early case assessment: Clearwell Systems and Guidance Software.

Clearwell has done well in quickly turning the need for ECA into widely used capabilities both prior to and after collection, and while it is debatable whether the company was first to hit the market with it, it is hard to dispute that it was the first commonly used tool. Guidance has been in the e-data business for many years, and its EnCase eDiscovery product has been in the e-discovery market since 2002.  While a little late to the post-collection review stage, Guidance's tool can be effectively used for identification, preservation, collection, processing and producing load files for review platforms.

So let's compare and contrast.

EnCase offers ECA functionality prior to, during, and after the collection on the basis of its Optimized Distributed Search ("ODS") technology, which allows IT administration to place servlet  on individual workstations and gain complete visibility to the end-points without having to index or migrate data. A high percentage of its customers are using these capabilities in support of multiple types of investigations (inappropriate activity, remote intrusion, e-discovery), and it would be valid to characterize EnCase as a comprehensive general-purpose discovery and forensic engine.  Its ability to reach every node in a network, including desktops, laptops, and servers, make it a popular collection and processing tool.

However, as previously mentioned, the tool has had analysis and first-pass review capability for less than one year, and it lacks full-blown review capabilities.

The Clearwell Legal Discovery Solution claims to have "90% data culling rates, and improved defensibility in court that addresses each stage of the e-discovery lifecycle from identification and legal hold through review and production, delivering significant cost savings and improved case outcomes".  Clearwell boasts quite an impressive list of clients (a certain reward for being the first on the scene in terms of in-house review capabilities) and enjoys instant recognition when the topic of ECA in the review context is mentioned.

However, there is a price to be paid for beating everyone else to the punch. Clearwell is now facing stiff competition and is rumored to lose potential clients over its pricing as well as limited data volume per appliance.  It doesn't offer metadata-only collections, which are valuable for pre-collection analytics.  Defensibility is also coming into question, with recent customer satisfaction issues (NDLO and Microsoft cases) challenging the supremacy of the product.  While well defended by Clearwell, such challenges widen the opening for other products to capture some of their market share.

While the debate on the usefulness and effectiveness of ECA continues, it should be noted that how the term is defined continues to evolve. Some of the service providers adapted quickly enough to have ECA as part of their "arsenal" a few years ago. Many of these tools were designed to filter metadata after collection and help the company decide how much a case will cost. This is a noble objective, but not completely in line with the original intent of ECA -- which was to help an organization determine its risk exposure and make strategic decisions about a case based on that analysis.

RenewData, which spent considerable time and effort researching ECA, analytics, and keyword-development techniques, took its time selecting a suite of ECA tools and chose not to go with Clearwell, Guidance, etc. The company's desire was to deliver tools that were more in line with the definition of ECA based on review capabilities, and it felt that what was already on the market wasn’t quite there yet. Instead, it focused on building two proprietary content analytics tools -- Vestigate and Anagram -- which can together help clients sift through large amounts of data quickly and relatively inexpensively, and make the strategic decisions that ECA promises.

Rich Cohen, president of RenewData, explains: "We have taken a unique approach to ECA, one that focuses specifically on the language of the matter, versus leveraging metadata filtering or complex mathematical formulas to simply churn through documents quickly. The result is a much more mechanical, transparent process that delivers far greater insight and greater certainty that you’re making strategic case decisions based on all relevant data available."

Considering the risks at hand, this could be a significant step forward -- to be able to determine your risk exposure early on in a case, based on what human beings are seeing in the language rather than point to a "black box"  purchased off the shelf.  Clearly, ECA capabilities both pre- and post-collection continue to evolve.

Labels: Clearwell, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, EDRM

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:57 PM 1 Comments

Linear Review is an Outdated Methodology

As we trudge through the first week of 2011, I am going through my list of Blog posts that I wanted to comment on and the December 28, 2010 post on Linear Review by Venkat Rangan, Clearwell Systems CTO, seemed like a good place to start 2011.  The post titled, “Reinventing Review in Electronic Discovery”  discusses a topic that I am very familiar with and have been somewhat outspoken about it in the past couple of years.  Review costs still comprise over 70% of the overall cost of eDiscovery and therefore as an industry, we need to find better ways to approach review and, more importantly, reduce the costs.

Given my background in enterprise class applications development methodology and technology, I lived through the paradigm shift when that industry shifted from legacy waterfall methodology (i.e. linear) to rapid applications development (RAD) and now agile development methodology.  The increases in productivity were dramatic.

Mr. Rangan’s bases his Blog post on a excellent paper by The Demise of Linear Review by Bennett Borden of Williams Mullen.  Mr. Rangan states that the paper, citing several factual data from various studies, as well as drawing parallel to other similar anachronisms of the past, makes excellent arguments for rethinking how legal review is performed in eDiscovery.

I hope that in 2011, the litigation market begins to understand and embrace both the practical and financial benefits of replacing linear review with newer and more effective review methodologies and technologies.

The full text of Mr. Rangan’s Blog post is as follows:

In a recent workshop that I attended, I had the privilege of sharing thoughts on the latest electronic discovery trends with other experts in the market. Especially interesting to me was discussing the provocatively titled paper, The Demise of Linear Review by Bennett Borden of Williams Mullen. The paper, citing several factual data from various studies, as well as drawing parallel to other similar anachronisms of the past, makes excellent arguments for rethinking how legal review is performed in e-discovery.

When linear review is mentioned, the first mental picture one conjures up is boredom. It has generally been associated with a mental state that is a result of repetitive and monotonous tasks, with very little variation. To get a sense for how bad this can affect performance, one only needs to draw upon several studies of boredom at the workplace, especially in jobs such as mechanical assembly of the 1920s and the telephone switchboard operators of the 1950s. In fact, the Pentagon sponsored study, Implications for the design of jobs with variable requirements, from Navy Personnel Research and Development Center, presents an excellent treatise on contributors for workplace fatigue, stress, monotony, and distorted perception of time. This is best illustrated in their paper:

Mechanical assembly, inspection and monitoring, and continuous manual control are the principal kinds of tasks most frequently studied by researchers investigating the relationship between performance and presumed boredom. On the most repetitive tasks, degradation of performance has typically been found within 30 minutes (Fox & Embry, 1975; Saito, Kishida, Endo, & Saito, 1972). The early studies of the British Industrial Fatigue Board (Wyatt & Fraser, 1929) concluded that the worker’s experience of boredom could be identified by a characteristic output curve on mechanical assembly jobs. The magnitude of boredom was inversely related to output and was usually marked by a sharp decrement in the middle of a work period.
How does this apply to linear review? Well, a linear review is most often performed using a review application or tool, simulating a person reading and classifying a pile of documents. The reviewer is asked to read the document and apply a review code, based on their judgment. While it appears easy, it can be one of the most stressful, boring, and thankless jobs for a well-educated, well-trained knowledge worker. Even with technology and software advances a reviewer is required to read documents in relatively constrained workflows. Just scrolling through pages and pages of a document, comprehending its meaning and intent in the context of the production request can make it stressful. To add to this, reviewers are often measured for their productivity based on the number of documents or pages they review per day or per hour. In cases where large number of reviewers are involved, there are very direct comparisons of rates of review. Finally, the review effort is judged for quality without consideration for the very elements that impact quality. Imagine a workplace task where every action taken by a knowledge worker is monitored and evaluated to the minutest detail.

Given this, it is no wonder that study after study has found a straight plough-through linear review produces less than desirable results. A useful way to measure effectiveness of a review exercise is to submit the same collection of documents to multiple reviewers and assess their level of agreement on their classification of the reviewed documents in specific categories. One such study, Document Categorization in Legal Electronic Discovery: Computer Classification vs. Manual Review, finds that the level of agreement among human reviewers was only in the 70% range, even when agreement is limited to positive determination. As noted in the study, previous TREC inter-assessor agreement notes as well as other studies on this subject by Barnett et al., 2009 also shows a similar and consistent result. Especially noteworthy from TREC is the fact that only 9 out of 40 topics studied had an agreement level higher than 70%, while remarkably, four topics had no agreement at all. Some of the disagreement is due to the fact that most documents fall on varying levels of responsiveness which cannot easily be judged on binary yes/no decision (i.e., the “where do you draw the relevance line” problem). However, a significant source on variability is simply attributed to the boredom and fatigue that comes with repetitiveness of the task.

A further observation on reviewer effectiveness is available from the TREC 2009 Overview Report, which studied the appeals and adjudication process of that year’s Interactive Task. This study offers an excellent opportunity to assess the effectiveness of initial review and subsequent appeals and adjudication process. As noted in the study, the Interactive Task involves an initial run submission from participating teams which are sampled and reviewed by human assessors. Upon receiving their initial assessments, participating teams are allowed to appeal those judgments. Given the teams’ incentive to improve upon the initial results, they are motivated to construct an appeal for as many documents as they can, with each appeal containing a justification for re-classification. As noted in the study, the success rates of appeals were very high, with 84% to 97% of initial assessments being reversed. Such reversals were across the board and directly proportional to the number of appeals, suggesting that even the assessments that were not appealed could be suspect. Another aspect that is evidenced is that the appeals process requires a convincing justification from the appealing team, in the form of a snippet of the document, document summary, or a portion of the document highlighted for adjudication. This in itself biases the review and makes it easier for the topic assessor to get a clearer sense for the document on their attempt at adjudicating the appeal. This fact is also borne out by the aforementioned Computer Classification vs. Manual Review study where the senior litigator with the knowledge of the matter had the ability to offer the best adjudications.

Given that linear review is flawed, what are the remedies? As noted in Bennett’s paper, intelligent use of newer technologies along with a review workflow that leverages them can offer gains that are demonstrated in other industries. Let’s examine a few of them.

Response Variation Response variation is a strategy for coping with boredom by attempting to build variety into the task itself. In mechanical assembly lines, response variation is added through innovative floor and task layouts, such as Cellular Layout. On some tasks, response variation may involve only simple alternation behaviors, such as reversing the order in which subtasks are performed; on others, the variety may take more subtle forms reflected in an inconsistency of response times. In the context of linear review, it can help to organize your review batches so that your review teams alternate classifying documents for responsiveness, privilege and confidential etc. Another interesting approach would be to mix the review documents but suggest that each be reviewed for a specific target classification.

Free-Form Exploration Combining aspects of early case assessments and linear review is one form of exploration that is known to offer both a satisfying experience and effective results. While performing linear review, the ability to suspend the document being reviewed and jump to other similar documents and topics gives the reviewer a cognitive stimulus that improves knowledge acquisition. Doing so offers an opportunity for the reviewer to learn facts of the case that would normally be difficult to obtain, and approach the knowledge levels of a senior litigator of the case. After all, we depend on the knowledge of the matter to be a guide for reviewers, so attempts to increase their knowledge of the case can only be helpful. Also, on a free-form exploration, a reviewer may stumble on an otherwise difficult to obtain case fact and the sheer joy of finding something valuable would be rewarding.

Expanding the Work Product Besides simply judging the review disposition of a document, the generation of higher value output such as document summaries, critical snippets, and document meta-data that contribute to the assessment can both reduce the boredom of the current reviewer as well as contribute valuable insights to other reviewers. As noted earlier, being able to assist the review with such aids can be immensely helpful in your review process.

Review Technologies Of course, fundamentally changing linear review with specific technologies that radically changes the review workflow is an approach worth considering. While offering such aids, it must be remembered that human judgment is still needed and the process must incorporate both increasing their knowledge as well as their ability to apply judgment. We will examine these technologies in an upcoming post.

Labels: 26(f), Discovery, Early Case Assessment, ECA, EDD, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Best Practices, eDiscovery Costs, eDiscovery Market, EDRM, ESI

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:08 AM 0 Comments

Continuous Case Assessment (CCA)

The first “ECA solutions” focused on taking collected data sets, processing the information, and then making it available for review.  As such, these solutions focused on the process, analysis, and review modules of the EDRM, as seen in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 – First-Generation ECA


Solutions that deliver just the processing, analysis, and review functionality of first-generation ECA can still deliver real value.  The clear trend, however, is for organizations to take more and more activity on the left side of the EDRM (information management, identification, preservation, and collection) in-house.  As such, it is better to have a more integrated “ECA solution,” one that can identify potentially responsive information across multiple data sources, collect it, preserve it (either in-place or in a dedicated preservation repository), process it, run analytics, and present the information for review in a user interface that legal professionals can quickly grasp.

By adding functionality to identify, collect, and preserve, solution providers can deliver even more costs savings and risk mitigation. A more integrated solution does not necessarily mean single-sourcing the ECA solution.  As eDiscovery is an immature market, there are not many vendor that offer end-to-end solutions.  And those that do offer “full” solutions often have modules that are weak links.  The reality is that a full ECA solution may come from a number of vendors that partner to offer full functionality.  It’s important to test that partnerships are real – that integrations are pre-built and proven as opposed to two vendors that have swapped logos for marketing purposes.

The next-generation of ECA solutions adds not only identification, collection, and preservation features, but also adds production, as seen in Figure 2 below.  While not a necessity, production features allow organizations to quickly produce data to other parties as needed without having to send data to a law firm or out to a service provider for production services.

Figure 2 – Next-Generation ECA


We will explore ECA further in a formal report on the topic, including the benefits of an integrated ECA solution, as well as some of the concerns of moving ECA to the left on the EDRM.  If your organization is doing early ECA, we’d love to hear more about it!

Labels: Assessments, Autonomy, BPI, BPM, Business Process Automation, Business Process Improvement, Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Costs, EDRM

posted by Charles Skamser @ 8:47 AM 0 Comments

The Early Case Assessment (ECA) Debate Continues

As we emerge from the Memorial Day weekend and head into a short work week, it appears from my standard morning perusal of news and updates in eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance) GRC, that there is a “raging” debate about the definition of Early Case Assessment (ECA).  Well, maybe its not really “raging”.  However, there does appear to be significant ongoing debate with legacy litigators on one side, technologists on the other and many others either misinformed, under-informed or uninterested.

The latest players to enter the debate are George Socha & Tom Gelbmann or EDRM fame.  In an article published on the Law.com site on June 1, 2010 titled, “Don't Box ECA”, the pair contend that Early Case Assessment (ECA) actually proceeds eDiscovery.  They go on to contend that, “Early case assessment is a process. It predates e-discovery and extends beyond the limits of EDD's range.  ECA is a traditional aspect of the work done by in-house and outside counsel as they decide what to do about a new matter. It starts when the attorneys pick up the first whiff of a lawsuit, and covers a broad swath of potential preliminary decisions to make and actions to undertake.”  All of these observations are true.   And, it shows that shows some great examples of how Early Case Assessment (ECA) is a process that includes and requires the participation of litigators and technologists.

Litigators have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they can not appropriate complete an acceptable Early Case Assessment (ECA) process with the use of technology.  And, without the leadership of an experienced and knowledgeable litigator at the helm, the best Early Case Assessment (ECA) technology on the market is not going work.

For Early Case Assessment (ECA) to succeed, there has to be an experienced litigator using the right technology.  Any approach that leaves one or the other one the sidelines is doomed to failure.  Further and finally, I believe that the court system(s) and judges need to "get up to speed" on the technology of Early Case Assessment (ECA) and led the charge to ensure that "it" is used and used properly.

The full text of George and Tom’s article is as follows:

The latest electronic data discovery buzz phrase is most definitely "early case assessment." But if you examine the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (http://www.edrm.net/), which offers guidelines and standards for e-discovery consumers and providers, you will search in vain for a box entitled ECA.

By not including one, have we missed a crucial step in the e-discovery process?
No. In our opinion, the term early case assessment is misapplied in the e-discovery context. While ECA can — and often should — address e-discovery issues, early case assessment sweeps much more broadly. To the extent ECA connects with e-discovery, the EDRM diagram already accommodates it.

WHAT IS EDRM?
First, a bit of context for readers who may not be familiar with the Electronic Discover Reference Model project. Run by the authors, it includes more than 300 participants from 42 providers, 18 consumer organizations, and 48 individuals.

The group currently is tackling eight projects, ranging from an Information Management Reference Model, to Jobs, to XML, to Search. We held our 2010 Kickoff Meeting last month in St. Paul, Minn.
Participants pay fees ranging from $150 for an individual working on one project, to $7,500 for providers with more than 10 people, for all projects.

WHAT IS ECA?
Early case assessment is a process. It predates e-discovery and extends beyond the limits of EDD's range.
ECA is a traditional aspect of the work done by in-house and outside counsel as they decide what to do about a new matter.

It starts when the attorneys pick up the first whiff of a lawsuit, and covers a broad swath of potential preliminary decisions to make and actions to undertake.

For counsel inside and out, these ECA decisions and actions may include, but are not limited to:

• Is there a case? What is it about? What are the issues? Are they legal? Factual?
• How much does this matter appear to be worth? Is it only an issue of money? Is it an "above the fold" problem? Are important principles at stake? Is the matter likely to have an impact on the company's reputation? What about the stock price?
• Is this an isolated matter? Or part of a pattern? Are we looking at a class action lawsuit, maybe multi-district litigation?
• How much should I budget for this matter? How much for attorney fees, experts, EDD costs, other expenses? What about settlement?
• Is there insurance coverage? How much? Under what circumstances? Are we self-insured? Is excess coverage available? Do we need to set aside reserves?
• What resources do I need to devote to this matter? Internal versus external? Hard costs versus soft?
• Do I need outside attorneys? If so, whom? How many? At what level? With what expertise? Do I need local counsel? Do I want to share counsel with others?
• Who can tell me more about the matter? Can I get help from my colleagues in the law department? From current employees? Former employees? Consulting experts?
• Who has something I might need for the case? What do they have – insights? Experience? Information on paper? Information in electronic form? Tangible objects?
• Do we need a litigation hold? And if so, what does that entail? E-discovery can play a real and important role in ECA, as demonstrated by a quick examination of some of the EDRM stages. Think of the EDRM diagram as ECA writ small.

EXAMPLES
Here are a few examples:

Identification: Do I have quick and ready access to electronically stored information? What content can help me better address the issues listed above?
What types of ESI are we going to confront? E-mail? Structured data? Office files (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets)? The contents of wikis, blogs, and other social media?
Where might the ESI be located? On what systems? In what geographical locations? Who knows about it, controls it, can get me to it, or can get it to me?

Preservation and Collection: When do I need to begin preserving ESI? How should I do that? What forms of preservation should I consider? What legal hold process? How soon can I collect ESI for early analysis? Will it be part of a preservation process, or something separate?

Processing: If I have identified ESI of potential interest, does it need some level of processing before I can begin to assess or analyze that data?
Do I need to get ESI converted to forms I can more readily evaluate? Are there ways to help me quickly find some wheat in the chaff?
Should some ESI be indexed, for rapid iterative searches?

Analysis: Here is the "assessment" piece. What can I glean from the readily available ESI that helps address the topics listed above?

Review and Production: Is there any portion of this ESI that I need to get to someone else quickly, and if so, in what form?

Presentation: At this early stage, do I need to put any of this ESI in front of someone else — to draw out more information, attempt to validate or refute what I think I know, or attempt to persuade someone?

Labels: Early Case Assessment, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Best Practices, EDRM, Socha

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:26 AM 0 Comments

eDiscovery Workflow Will Reduce the Complexity and Cost of eDiscovery for the Global 2000

eDiscovery is complicated and very expensive. Or so the outside law firms, eDiscovery technology vendors, eDiscovery service providers and eDiscovery consultants have led us to believe.

Having spent most of career developing and marketing Information Technology (IT) solutions for the Global 2000, I just don’t buy into the myth that it (eDiscovery) has to be complicated or as expensive as it has been portrayed.

Management of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) within the Global 2000 has been going on successfully for many years outside of eDiscovery and many of the technologies, workflows and best practices that have been developed by IT professionals can and should be applied to the practice of eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) for that matter.

There is not doubt that eDiscovery poses an extra layer of legal requirements that aren’t present in the general business environment. And then there is always that little issue of maybe having to provide testimony and get cross examined in court about what you did and how you did it (no more secrets). However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t utilize what we have learned in regards to workflow and best practices outside of eDiscovery over the past ten (10) years and apply them to the practice of eDiscovery today.


Historically, eDiscovery has been completed by a variety of unrelated processes both inside and outside the enterprise (depending upon the wishes of outside counsel and the political prowess of the CIO in question).  Further, these processes have exchanged Electronically Stored Information (ESI) via the present day equivalent of “sneaker net”. 

However, sophisticated workflow platforms are now available that can easily integrate these currently disparate processes into one integrated process that will save time and money.

Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to report on some of these platforms and provide some recommendations on which ones work, which one's don’t, how much they cost and what the return on investment (ROI) should be.

As such, I would encourage any vendors that have products that fit into this category to contact me with overview of their platforms and their marketing message.

To provide some foundation of understand of what eDiscovery workflow is all about,  Simon Taylor, the Senior Director, Information Access Management for CommVault, wrote an excellent article titled, “Managing IT Workflow For E-Discovery,” that appeared on the Computer Technology Review site on May 12, 2010.

The full text of Mr. Taylor’s article is as follows:

Electronic discovery (eDiscovery) has become a front-and-center IT concern as increasing numbers of companies struggle to respond effectively and efficiently to legal actions. Earlier this year, a landmark court opinion issued by U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin significantly upped the ante for organizational responsibility to preserve data by imposing monetary penalties on 13 plaintiffs for negligence and gross negligence in failing to protect discoverable data.

This ruling, which outlines new contemporary standards for eDiscovery, has been characterized as a “wake-up call” to litigants. The decision also raises the bar for IT involvement in preserving electronically stored information (ESI), which has become incredibly complex due to the sheer volume of records that needs to be managed. Discoverable data has also at the same time grown to include emails, files, documents, backup and archive data, often across multiple sites and media and some times geographies. New social media formats, such as Facebook and Twitter, also now are considered part of ESI.

Evolving case law and growing regulatory pressures now force  organizations to gain greater control of their data, fueling new investments in eDiscovery technologies. According to Gartner Group, spending on electronic discovery software and services will grow between 25 and 35 percent annually through 2012. Despite this uptake, many organizations are still grappling with budget constraints and therefore must focus on finding ways to improve eDiscovery readiness in response in increasing litigations without incurring huge IT and legal costs.

IT managers and system integrators can play pivotal roles in helping companies lower litigation costs, duration and risk by driving eDiscovery efficiencies and effectiveness through:

• Streamlining information management,
• Consolidating eDiscovery processes, and
• Expediting stakeholder decision making.

Improving Information Management Efficiency
Too often, organizations learn the hard way that finding relevant data in response to litigation and legal discovery actions is neither quick nor easy but always costly. The ability to identify, locate, collect and, more importantly, preserve all discoverable data, regardless of where it resides, is considered one of the biggest and costliest obstacles in eDiscovery.

One of the reasons is the existence of information in various forms and formats, including financial reports, personnel files, customer records, emails, research results, etc. Also, corporate stakeholders often are unsure where and how their information is stored, protected and accessed. The result: some organizations operate reactively, which can lead to lots of manual effort, wasteful repetition and repeated requests for additional discoveries. Others outsource the entire process or reach early settlements to avoid it altogether.

To complicate matters, organizations have tended to defer decisions on compliance and records retention in favor of saving everything. This strategy makes it exceedingly difficult to isolate relevant information and draw relationships between different pieces of data in order to extract real business value. The process of constantly saving and protecting copious amounts of data leads to inordinate duplication and increased risk through a general lack of control across compliance, governance and eDiscovery objectives.

IT managers and systems integrators can drive information management efficiencies by facilitating the development of a consistent, repeatable and automated strategy for identifying and reducing the data required for legal review. Robust information management solutions have evolved to help IT control data from creation to deletion. Ideally, technologies that employ a singular information management approach provide the greatest visibility of and easiest access to corporate data residing on file servers, storage systems, laptops and desktops. Deduplication technology is an effective addition as it can reduce up to 90 percent of backup and archive data stored on disk and tape while decreasing the amount of data that needs to be searched in response to an ESI discovery request.

The ability to simplify information management is a great first step toward enabling proactive, end-to-end eDiscovery. The next step consolidates multiple eDiscovery workflow phases to achieve further economies of scale and productivity improvements.

Consolidating eDiscovery Workflow Processes
The most well-established guidelines and standards for eDiscovery consumers and providers are encompassed in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), which is designed to reduce the cost, time and manual effort associated with eDiscovery. The model, first developed in 2005, has been refined with continuous input and practical experience from more than 100 eDiscovery experts. Together, they identified nine essential steps, including:

1. Information Management,
2. Identification,
3. Preservation,
4. Collection,
5. Processing,
6. Review,
7. Analysis,
8. Production, and 
9. Presentation.

Within each step, there are many unique elements and actions that can impact the resolution of a particular matter. For that reason, it’s crucial for companies to navigate these steps carefully while looking for every opportunity to collapse discrete processes. Fortunately, technology has evolved to where many of the eDiscovery workflow steps can be performed simultaneously.

The ability to retain all forms of data in a virtualized repository, for example, enables companies to leverage sophisticated yet easy-to-use search, index and content classification capabilities that can be used together for highly effective data mining. Additionally, intelligent search and data classification technologies make it possible to assemble most of the pieces of the eDiscovery workflow puzzle in-house, including legal hold, legal hold tracking, file collection, file processing and legal review.

Consolidated data identification, preservation, collection and processing can dramatically accelerate the document review process while providing a head start in determining early case assessments. Reducing the number of discrete processes also decreases the amount of stakeholders who need to be involved in eDiscovery, which can lead to faster, more effective decision making.

Expediting Stakeholder Decision Making
Traditionally, each eDiscovery workflow phase was associated with a separate set of project stakeholders, comprising IT, paralegal teams, internal counsel, human resources, compliance and various end-user representatives as well as external attorneys and outsourced eDiscovery providers. When eDiscovery involves manual effort, more people are required, which can strain corporate resources and cause a proliferation of redundant data.

Companies with sound proactive information management strategies and technologies are well positioned to expedite repetitive eDiscovery decisions with a small yet dedicated core group of stakeholders. In contrast, organizations with inadequate information management typically require more internal and external stakeholders, with obvious challenges in communication leading to time consuming, repetitive and laborious activities.

Looking ahead, it’s clear that the IT team can prove invaluable in helping companies meet eDiscovery challenges by leveraging highly efficient information management technologies and best practices. Ultimately, companies that continually seek solutions to elevate productivity and operational efficiencies while containing costs will improve their legal and risk position and, as a result, gain greater credibility in court.

Labels: eDiscovery, EDRM, Workflow

posted by Charles Skamser @ 4:26 PM 1 Comments

Electronic Data Discovery Workflow and Best Practices

Over the past twenty four (24) months I have had the opportunity to meet with law firms, the litigation and IT departments of the Fortune 2000, regional litigation service providers, eDiscovery consultants and eDiscovery technology vendors to discuss the current state and technologies of eDiscovery.  Based upon these discussions, I have come to the conclusion that there are substantial differences in approach and a complete lack of standards in Electronic Data Discovery (EDD) workflow and best practices throughout the entire industry.

Even after the tremendous body of  EDD research and information being proliferated by the Sedona Conference Institute and the other various groups associated with the Sedona Conference along with the excellent EDD guidelines and standards established by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model, there is still a wide chasm between what these experts have established as the EDD standards and how the main stream litigation market processes EDD.

As such, I am planning to spend the next two (2) - three (3) weeks soliciting detailed input on "real world" EDD workflow and best practices from all available sources and then publish the results.  Please note that this exercise is not intended to replace any of the work done by either the EDRM or the Sedona Conference.    However, I believe that we could lay the foundation for creating a mainstream guide to EDD.

As a place to start, I would like to offer the following questions for discussion:

1. What tools are being used at each step of the EDRM model if any?
2. Are these tools integrated or do you have to move data in between them?
3. If you have to move data, is anyone really using the new EDRM XML standard?
4. How many IT organizations have instituted data retention policies with litigation in mind?
5. How many IT organizations are using technologies like Kazeon or Autonomy for for in-place collection, processing and analysis, in an integrated workflow within a single application?
6. Are the tools as mention in # 5 able to collect all of the data?  And, if not, how the remainder of the data being collected and integrated?
7. How does litigation hold technology  from vendors such as Exterro fit into the process? And, are they tightly integrated or loosely coupled requiring manual management?
8. Where do early case assessment technologies from vendors such as Clearwell Systems fit into the process?
9. Is the market finding that the tools as listed in # 8 are sufficient for "flattening" all of the embedded files from the Electronically Stored Information (ESI) or are they only used to gather and produce a general file extension catalogue?
10. Is the market using tools like Clearwell for early case assessment and then importing the data into standard EDD processing tools like LAW and iPro for production processing?
11. Given the answer to # 9, is the market concerned that "smoking gun" ESI is not being discovered?
12. Given the answers to # 9 - # 11, how are these tools being used in conjunction with  requirements and preparation for the 26(f) conferences?
13. When is culling and de-dupe taking place and what technologies are being used?
14. Are the keywords for culling and filtering being externally determined by the legal teams or in some way being internally generated by technology?
15. Where do conceptual search technologies such as Orcatec and leading de-dupe technologies such as Equivio  fit into this process?
16. What percentage of ESI is the culling and de-duping process removing from the data pool?
17. How is the market completing the various review processes and what tools are they using?
18. Is the market doing early case assessment with native files, loading the results into a review tool, completing an initial "quick peek" of the data to develop keywords and then loading the data back into an EDD processing solution for another culling and de-dupe pass?  Or, is this all happening in a single pass?
19. Is the market concerned that opposing parties are not processing data effectively enough produce adequate responses?
20. Is the market actually using the 26(f) conference to define how opposing parties are going to produce responsive data?
21. How is the market handling privileged ESI during this process?  What is the actual privileged information is only part of an ESI data set?
22. Is the market still imaging ESI into TIFF and PDF for Review and final production?
23. How do bates numbers fit into this process?
24. How is the market integrating paper data into this process?
25. How is the market handling complex coding?
26. Is the market still using in house legacy client/server solutions for the most part to complete the various pieces of the EDD process?
27. What does the market think about the new generation of SaaS based EDD solutions?
28. Are there any single source end-to-end solutions?
29. Are there any integrated end-to-end solutions?
30. Is the market concerned with chain of custody issues?
31. Have the courts ruled in any definitive way on any accepted way of processing EDD?
32. Has the cost of eDiscovery gone down or gone up over the past six (6) months?  And, if it has gone down, why?
33. Do corporate IT departments want control over the EDD process?  And, is that the right place for it to reside?

Answering these questions and the ones that these questions will prompt is certainly not going to fill in the chasm between the current best practices and standards as put forth by the experts and the rest of us mere mortals in the litigation market.  However, it might begin to provide the market with some real world examples of what works and what doesn't work.
I encourage everyone who has input to any one of these questions to respond.  And then , stay tuned for an update in a couple of weeks.

Labels: Autonomy, Best Practices, Clearwell, EDD, eDiscovery, EDRM, EDRM XML, IPRO, Kazeon, The Sedona Conference, Workflow

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:49 PM 1 Comments

Another Round of eDiscovery Technology Enhancements as Vendors Stampede Towards Single Source Solutions

Although it is not the purpose of The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift to track litigation technology vendors and thier most recent releases, it appears that there has been a recent flurry of announcements regarding either the enhancement of early collection or the addition of further Early Case Assessment (ECA) analysis that futher enforce my contention that there is a variable vendor stampede towards single source solutions: eDiscovery Single Source Solutions.

This vendor stampede is great for end users in the short run as it appears that most of the more well know players in the litigation technology market are continuig to offer the missing components to bring their solutions up to the "single source" platform criteria.

However, in the long run as is always the case when market to through a paradigm shift and as we are now witnesses with the last days of NFL training camps, not everyone, not every vendor is going to make the cut. There is going to be consolidation, some complete failures and some near failures. And, in the long run this will be good for a stable mature eDiscovery markte. However, in the short run, even through end-users now have many "good" choices, they better consider other factors in choosing their vendors such as longevity.

In future posts to this Blog, I will offer some suggestions to end users to help them avoid choosing the wrong vendors.

August 2008 Vendor Announcements

Kazeon Extends eDiscovery Collection, Processing and Analysis with Legal Hold and Laptop/Desktop Product

Mountain View, Calif. - August 25, 2008 - Kazeon Systems, Inc., a leading provider of intelligent eDiscovery solutions, today announced the availability of Version 3.1 of its award-winning Information Server IS1200-ECS. The new version introduces a new in-place legal hold, KazHold™ and a new agent-less product for in-place analysis of and collection from laptops/desktops. These new products and functionality are key enhancements in helping organizations streamline their collection, analysis and processing for proactive and reactive eDiscovery processes and ensure that they discover all relevant and necessary information for any litigation related activity. These new capabilities provide extensive defensibility and audit ability for eDiscovery by ensuring no spoliation of data and no modifications to metadata attributes of files and emails, while saving significantly on network bandwidth and cost during the process of collection, processing and analysis. With Version 3.1 of its Information Server IS1200-ECS Kazeon continues to set the standard in addressing the most sophisticated eDiscovery requirements of organizations worldwide. The IS1200-ECS is now being used by hundreds of corporations worldwide, and has more than 50 billion documents and 3000 Terabytes under direct management.

FTI Announces Availability of Attenex® Patterns® 5.0

FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN), the global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance their enterprise value, today announced from the ILTA ’08 conference the availability of Attenex Patterns version 5.0. The release of Attenex Patterns 5.0 marks the first product announcement since FTI Consulting acquired Attenex in July 2008. The new eDiscovery software includes a number of significant enhancements to help corporate IT departments administer and enforce a repeatable in-house eDiscovery process.

“Attenex Patterns is the eDiscovery standard for many law firms and corporations because it puts them in the best position to make the best decision on any matter—whether for investigations, legal or compliance needs,” said JR Jesson, senior managing director of FTI Consulting. “Enhancements in Attenex Patterns 5.0 benefit corporate IT teams tasked with developing a defensible and cost-effective eDiscovery process.”

Among the new features within Attenex Patterns 5.0, the software development kit (SDK) enables corporate IT teams to automate eDiscovery processing tasks, reducing unnecessary expenses and the risk of human error. The software’s open APIs help corporate IT teams leverage existing investments by integrating Attenex Patterns with complementary applications and data sources. Additionally, corporate IT teams can develop integrated utilities for custom eDiscovery processing tasks.

The dramatic growth of enterprise data collected during litigation, internal investigations and regulatory inquiries creates new challenges for corporate eDiscovery teams. Attenex Patterns 5.0 helps the in-house team rise to this challenge by delivering several new performance enhancements for managing eDiscovery matters—whether multinational or multi-terabyte. These enhancements include improved data processing and search performance with Asian languages, faster processing speeds for multiple PST and NSF files, as well as faster de-duplication and re-clustering capabilities to help eDiscovery teams more quickly make sense of the data during internal investigations and case assessments.

Businesses have identified Attenex as a top five eDiscovery software provider for the second straight year in the most recent Socha-Gelbmann eDiscovery survey. A longtime market leader in document processing and analytics software for eDiscovery, Attenex Patterns software consists of:

Attenex® Patterns® Workbench™, enterprise-class data and project management software used by leading corporations to implement repeatable in-house eDiscovery processes. More than a culling tool or appliance, in-house eDiscovery teams rely on Workbench’s unprecedented flexibility for filtering collected data, developing case strategy as well as tracking document decisions and work product throughout the process; and Attenex® Patterns® Document Mapper™, the choice of legal and compliance teams that need to quickly and accurately identify relevant information from electronic document collections of any size. An unparalleled visual interface increases review productivity with a multi-dimensional look at the collection’s main concepts and themes. Reviewers can quickly and accurately identify, analyze, review and categorize documents during internal investigations or case assessments.

Attenex Patterns can be deployed on-premise or on-demand through an Attenex Advantage™ service provider, providing flexible deployment options that can be customized to the needs of any environment. This flexibility, combined with new features in version 5.0, further strengthens Attenex Patterns’ position as the premier eDiscovery software for corporations that want to take control of their eDiscovery process.

StoredIQ eDiscovery Appliance 4.6 Increases Functionality Leadership with Expanded Platform Support and Enhanced eDiscovery Features

Austin, TX. August 25, 2008 — StoredIQ, Inc., whose innovative eDiscovery technology revolutionizes the way companies address eDiscovery and litigation readiness, announced today expanded platform integration support and enhanced eDiscovery functionality designed to improve the efficiency of IT and legal teams performing work within the eDiscovery lifecycle.
"StoredIQ automates more of the eDiscovery lifecycle than any other solution," said Steve Killan, Enterprise Server Manager at James Hardie, the world leader in fiber cement technology. "StoredIQ delivers unparalleled functionality in both breadth and depth from information management through the identification, collection, preservation and processing of electronically stored information."

StoredIQ V4.6 includes:

- Expanded Platform Support
- Ability to insert unstructured information as records into the most current version of EMC Documentum and place those items under litigation hold
- Ability to insert, retrieve and manage information within Microsoft Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007
- Deeper eDiscovery Capabilities
- Improved query report analytics to assist with "meet-and-confer" sessions
Ability to harvest additional email server objects such as tasks, contacts, calendar items, and notes
- Support of the EDRM XML V1.0 load file format
- Enhanced usability and productivity for pre-collection investigations

Labels: Attenex, Documentum, Early Case Assessment, eCapture, EDRM, FTI, Kazeon, SharePoint, StoredIQ, XML

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:45 AM 0 Comments

Evidence Lifecycle Management

I had to the opportunity this past week to speak with Steve Liley, the Founder, President and CEO of WorkProducts and get an update on the current status of his Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) appliance. The discussion was prompted in part from my recent post titled, "eDiscovery Confounds Companies and Their Lawyers" and several other posts over the past month revolving around my recommendations for the enterprise to engage in pro-active eDiscovery.

I met Steve about a year ago and found him to have a very indepth understanding of the eDiscovery market with specific insight into pro-active eDiscovery. As such, I always enjoy our discussions/debates regarding the current state of the eDiscovery market.

Discussion Highlights
In our discussions this past, Steve indicated that his customers and ELM Ecosystem Partners are looking to the MatterSpace® Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) appliance for preservation management and case assessment/ESI delivery. This is because preservation management and case assessment are interwined with hold notices added/released based on case assessment, etc. Looking at this from the EDRM standpoint, this places MatterSpace® at the very beginning of the cycle if not earlier and places them in competition with other applicance vendors such as Kazeon and Mimosa Systems, litigation software providers such as Autonomy, and best of breed providers for litigation hold such a PSS Systems and Exterro.

He went on to further emphasize that another big reason for this is the WorkProducts business model, which is focused on MatterSpace® being much cheaper than one of the Top Prservation Software Provider (traditional software install for preservation mgt. = $500K+) with a small upfront subscription fee and per custodian crawl vs. a gigabyte model for collection/case assessment. This allows all size cases (3 custodian employment matters, etc.) to utilize MatterSpace® even when the stakes are small ($20K claim) as the user knows how much they are going to spend upfront.

Steve provided me with an example of a large company with 1,000 annual cases that has deployed MatterSpace® for just this reason. He contends that the per custodian crawl model scales up better than per gigabyte scales down for preservation management and case assessment.

We finished up our discussion by discussing the fact that facilitating eDiscovery services providers with behind a corporate firewall appliance that does preservation management & case assessment to then export data to service providers per gigabyte processing and review business models provides for a seamless client experience on all size litigation, scaling with each client’s case management needs.

My Conclusion
The proactive eDiscovery technology vendors hold the key to reducing the complexities and cost of "one-off" eDiscovery. As such, I believe that Steve and WorkProducts have a very bright future.

About WorkProducts
WorkProducts provides a leading Evidence Lifecycle Management (ELM) solution, the MatterSpace® Appliance, that speeds up matter-specific ESI delivery by a factor of ten - with improved quality - while dramatically reducing the risks and costs of ESI processing and legal review. MatterSpace is a secure, plug-and-play hardware and software appliance that quickly installs in a customer's network environment, integrating their eRecords systems with downstream eDiscovery products and services. MatterSpace "crawls" the enterprise network to identify, preserve, collect, index, and de-duplicate all accessible structured and unstructured electronically stored information (ESI) for all identified custodians and sources. This includes all enterprise accessible desktops, file shares, Exchange/Domino email, SharePoint, Symantec Enterprise Vault, ZANTAZ EAS, EMC Documentum, Open Text, etc. It also facilitates collaboration among all concerned parties and monitors and tracks all matter-specific ESI communications and events, including litigation holds.

Labels: Autonomy, EDRM, ELM, Evidence Lifecycle Management, Exterro, Kazeon, Mimosa Systems

posted by Charles Skamser @ 10:55 AM 0 Comments

Integreon Announces Single Source eDiscovery

In a followup to my recent post from July 2, 2oo8 titled "eDiscovery Single Source Solutions", Integreon Managed Solutions, Inc., the global leader in integrated Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), has confirmed the interest in providing single source solutions by announcing the launch of “Doctane”, a complete discovery management solution, which simplifies litigation project management, reduces the total cost of litigation and improves the predictability of litigation expense budgets.

Doctane offers a full suite of discovery services which can be integrated or selected as stand-alone components, at a fixed price per document including: Discovery Management Consulting; Data Collection, Processing, Analysis and Early Case Assessment; Data Hosting; Document Review and Production. Doctane is operated entirely in-house by Integreon, so clients benefit from the “one stop” convenience of managing all their discovery requirements with a single service provider.

Integreon has chosen MetaLINCS, Attenex, Concordance FYI and CaseLogistix as its best-in-class technology partners and Offers the flexibility of rapid start, cost control, and round-the-clock review teams with a choice of in-house, full-time staff attorneys to conduct privilege and responsiveness reviews from wholly-owned domestic centers in New York City, Fargo, ND (USA) and offshore centers in Mumbai and New Delhi (India), and Manila (Philippines).

As previously stated, I believe that vendors such as Integreon that go down the single source solution route are absolutely on target with market demand and as such will be one of the survivors as the market shakes out the pure players. However, from a users perspective, I would be more concerned with the risk associated with a player like Integreon that is taking a best-of-breed technology approach and is therefore at the mercy of the actually software vendor than with a player such as Case Central, Autonomy or Clearwell Systems that actaully owns their own technology.

Please note that as my next followup to eDiscovery Single Source Solutions, I am planning to review The OneO® Discovery Platform, an recently announced offering by Orange Legal Technologies out of Salt Lake City.

Labels: Attenex, CaseLogistixs, Clearwell, Doctane, EDRM, Integreon, Litigation Support Software, MetaLINCS, Orange Legal Technologies, single source

posted by Charles Skamser @ 9:38 AM 0 Comments

Interesting eDiscovery Technology Acquisition Opportunity

This entry marks that first time that I have posted information about a technology vendor that has eDiscovery technology and the desire to be acquired. It is important to point out that I am not a broker and I am only posting this information as a source of information for the eDiscovery market.

The eDiscovery technology company believes they would be a good acquisition target for an email/data archiving company or a national litigation support/e-discovery provider that would like to have its own e-discovery processing/production and review platform. Currently, they are open to acquisition by a larger company that would provide sales and support infrastructure or a strategic investment that would allow them to build out their own infrastructure. The technology fits into the Processing, Review, Analysis and Production phases of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM).

For more information about this company and transaction please go to the Litigation Support Industry: Business News and Information Blog.

Labels: eDiscovery, EDRM

posted by Charles Skamser @ 3:22 PM 0 Comments