eDiscovery Integration Platforms are Maturing

In a Blog post on July 14, 2010 by Bill Ives titled, “eDiscovery Market Consolidates but Integration Remains a Challenge”, Mr. Ives quotes a recent report titled “eDiscovery Market Consolidation Continues Its Steady March,“ from Brian Hill at Forrester, “…that recent survey results indicate that 60% of records management stakeholders and 57% of message archiving users perceive “synchronizing eDiscovery, records management, and archiving efforts” to be a challenge.”

Mr. Ives goes on to say that, “As usual, organizations must focus on separating marketing hype from actual functionality, especially in the area of end-to-end process capabilities. While integrated advances can provide concrete benefits and help rationalize application infrastructure, it’s important to look at these in the context of a broader eDiscovery strategy.  Such strategies should identify technology gaps and costly process integration points. Then enterprises need to request more eDiscovery application integration. Even then you cannot expect to end up with a single provider.”

I agree with the statement that it is unrealistic to expect to get an end-to-end solution from a single vendor and therefore enterprises should be taking a best-in-class approach.  And, I also agree that enterprises need to be weary of the integration issues and obstacles.  However, I would point out that organizations such as Exterro, with their Discovery Workflow platform have matured to the point of being a legitimate solution for seamless “enterprise class” integration of disparate eDiscovery technologies and more importantly, an advanced project management and workflow platform that meets and possible even exceeds the needs of today’s eDiscovery and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) professionals.

Consolidation is going to continue and “the consolidators” will endeavor to integrate their new toys. However, having spent a good portion of my career in enterprise class applications development, I have first hand knowledge of the difficultiies involved in integrating completely different code bases into a seamless solution.  There is now doubt that in today's world "coding world" with application frameworks, etc. that it is much easier to accomplish these "integration" tasks.  However, very few of the technology solutions that these consolidators are trying to integrate were written with or for today's framworks and therefore will end up being nothing more than "black boxes" that are sent calls and return results.  Further, it is highly unlikely that the consolidators have the intimate technical appreciation of knowledg of these applications to be able to extend them beyond their current versions (I've tried that before also).

As such, integrating best-in-class / single component solutions internally is always going to be an attractive alternative  for those organizations that want to or need to be on the leading edge across the entire process lifecycle.  And, with platforms like Discovery Workflow from Exterro, these organizations will be able to continue to mix and match and upgrade to new best-in-class solutions without missing too many beats in the process and ultimately prove to provide formidable competition to the single source solutions that grew out of consolidation.

Labels: Consolidation, eDiscovery, Exterro, Forrester, Integration, Project Management, Workflow

posted by Charles Skamser @ 1:52 PM 1 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