This article, written by Nuix CEO Eddie Sheehy, discusses his ideas about how to improve eDiscovery solutions the most efficient, cost-effect ways.
In these strained economic times, there is intense pressure on the eDiscovery process to improve operational performance, while processing increasingly large amounts of data faster, with less labor and lower costs and overhead, while also maintaining top-notch accuracy. Looking forward, there are a variety of logical improvements to eDiscovery technologies that need to be achieved to address market demands in the most effective, cost-efficient way.
1. eDiscovery technologies must improve processing speed to allow users to provide “answers” back to stakeholders rapidly, providing them an immediate strategic overview of their data. Whether it is large scale processing or an obscure investigative request, the gold standard is to be able to respond quickly while delivering accurate results. eDiscovery solutions need to produce a variety of reports and target an entire collection of data within a 24 hour turnaround time if a dataset is to act as a useful tool in early case assessment and strategic planning. The most useful reports needed at this critical point in case evaluation include:
• An extension report
• A breakdown of all of the file types and their frequency
• A duplicates report (number of duplicates and relative size)
• An email communications report
• A foreign language report
• A word count report (list of every word that occurs in the dataset and its frequency)
• A hit count report (based on your search terms and a listing of all of the items that matched the queries)
• Other custom reports
Within a full day, the end users of the data should be able to start reviewing and analyzing data, providing them the most strategic synopsis of the case at hand. eDiscovery technologies need to continuously evolve toward meeting this goal.
2. Facilitate expanding scalability through cost-conscious technological advances. Expanding business models through technologies like eDiscovery should be a reasonably priced investment that translates to advancements that reflect efficiencies such as cost-savings to vendors and customers. More and more often, open-ended legal billings are becoming an out-dated option of the past. Customers want new pricing structures depending on the amount of data and type of work involved, with justification for actions taken; without this, many will opt to forego the benefits of eDiscovery altogether until it is absolutely unavoidable.
What kind of cost-conscious options should eDiscovery consider to move toward in the future? Flexible software licensing enables users to decide on the type of system most suited to their needs. With the right eDiscovery software solution and proper hardware investment, any user can tackle any size job, but the investment should be appropriate to the types of jobs that user will actually be tackling. With the right investment for the job at hand, the resources that have been invested can actually be recovered in a matter of days in many cases.
3. Tackle any size job with eDiscovery by increasing your flexibility by never saying “no” to a challenging deadline and never having to delay because of difficult data. Users of eDiscovery today want serious power for relatively modest investments compared with what the industry has charged in the even recent past. Truly flexible eDiscovery processing means having the technological capability to process any challenge, such as PSTs from Chicago on one day and Lotus Domino data from China on the next eDiscovery software should be able to go as far into deeply embedded or hidden files as necessary to get the answer the customer is looking for. It should also be able to meet these challenges through speedy and flexible processing capabilities which can read a wide range of file types, in any required language, to meet the needs of the end user of the data.
4. eDiscovery should position software users to extend the scope of their services from simply processing data to a more consultative role. An eDiscovery provider — whether it is a dedicated in-house team or an outsourced litigation support vendor — should move up the value chain by using the time freed up by faster and more accurate software to play a more consultative role. The users who are the real experts on these software systems in any organization typically are able to increase efficiency by allowing a technology partner to handle technological issues as opposed to the organization trying to take them all on internally. The expertise on an eDiscovery processing team must extend far beyond IT, to a plethora of areas such as how the legal system works, implications of the FRCP and its various amendments, and advice on good practice and processes.
eDiscovery should enable users to search and analyze large quantities of data quickly, and reduce those extensive data sets into much smaller, relevant items in an open and transparent manner. Organizations utilizing solutions that offer this level of service with the ability perform all of these operations from a single workstation without having to send data offsite are positioned to be the most competitive to weather the current market downturn. Organizations doing so also earn a higher level of trust from their clients, and become invaluable in providing them with a big picture scope of the case at hand.
For example, eDiscovery should become a central part of early case assessment activities. By equipping a user with a laptop loaded with software, they can go to the attorney in charge of the case, index a couple of gigabytes of PSTs in an hour and be a genuine part of the case team.
Extending involvement beyond that of traditional eDiscovery users not only improves overall return on eDiscovery investment, but maximizes new client acquisition and retention and increases overall competitive edge. Professionals who recognize this advantage will be able to adjust their strategy by adopting eDiscovery technology that will enable them to lower their processing costs while dramatically increasing speed. When speed is no longer an issue, users can refocus their clients on the value they bring as talented advisors.
Reinvention has always been the key to success in the eDiscovery industry. The emergence of radically faster software that can operate in a multi-lingual environment, with a small hardware footprint, and which is unconstrained by file types is the engine that will fuel the next era of electronic discovery. Those who harness the power of this technology will flourish through the economic downturn, while others who do not will be outpaced.
About Nuix
Nuix has spent the past nine years developing and refining the world’s most advanced eDiscovery and electronic investigation software. Nuix revolutionizes the way government and private organizations investigate electronic information, improving simplicity and accuracy and slashing the time and cost of investigations by more than 80%. Nuix customers include all major advisory firms, litigation support firms, state and federal government departments, regulatory and security agencies, police and anti-corruption bodies, financial institutions, corporations and law firms.
Filed under Governance, Risk & Compliance, Home Page Featured, Technology Counsel, Uncategorized.
October 17th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
It’s interesting to see the way that eDiscovery has reinvented itself in the past, and how lawyers have (slowly) changed their practices to take advantage of it. From scanning paper docs (ick!), to petrification of electronic documents (getting better), to review and search of the native file and metadata together (hooray!). I also expect vendor firms to do more consulting, and I think existing corporate infrastructure will change to account more for litigation preparedness. Internal threat management and DLP systems already in place can provide a stepping stone so that responsive docs can be quickly and inexpensively produced.