EDD Uncertainty Looms Over LegalTech

It's no suprise that e-discovery continued to be front and center at LegalTech New York again this year. This persistent emphasis stems from the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which bring uncertainty and unpredictability to e-discovery outcomes for corporations and law firms alike.

This year's conference attendees were on the hunt for tools and services to reduce the impact of inadequate processes that can result in a less than "good faith" attempt at archiving business records. In addition, attendees looked for new products and services that would ensure litigation readiness. And the vendors at LegalTech did not let them down.

Fios launched two new e-discovery services aimed at the production electronically stored information. The services seek to reduce the risk and cost of managing ESI when litigation or a government investigation ensues. The Information Governance for E-Discovery Consulting Service utilizes Fios' best practices in assessment, analysis and planning methodology to help clients better understand their ESI throughout their organization so that it can be identified for a FRCP 26(f) "meet and confer" and preserved and collected for e-discovery.

The Information Governance for E-Discovery service includes high-level data mapping, which is intended to identify ESI content repositories based on anticipated litigation. The service incorporates input from IT, legal and records management. In addition, the service assesses current information management policies and practices and analyzes the gaps between existing and best practices to recommend a new governance for ESI that would be defensible in litigation.

Fios did not stop with services. It also enhanced the user interface to Prevail, added new search features, including the ability to search items categorized by individual users, and added Web load-balancing capabilities to improve performance and speed up document review.

Like Fios, PSS Systems also aimed to reduce EDD risks and costs. It announced a new version of its litigation hold and retention management software: Atlas LCC and Atlas ERM 3.1. The latest version of Atlas LCC for corporate legal departments includes features to dynamically scope legal holds from current and past matters and track holds by data source. Also, like Fios, it provides features to catalog where information is stored to provide a content map of ESI.

Atlas ERM for enterprise retention management has new country- and jurisdiction-based retention management templates for global programs and includes a mechanism to map document types, drafts, copies and records to discrete locations where ESI is stored.

EDD TRENDS

Integrations and partnerships in the EDD space will abound in 2008 as vendors leverage their core competencies and partner with best-of-breed solutions. This will be a win for both vendors and customers. PSS Systems demonstrated the integration of its Policy Enforcement Services module, which extends litigation holds and retention management to other systems: EMC Documentum Content Server; Microsoft Windows file shares; and Kazeon. In addition, Renew Data is working with Symantec to offer risk assessment and litigation preparedness for old backup tapes.

It will be easier to select best of breed applications in EDD when vendors adhere to standards. Both Fios and Clearwell announced their compliance with the Electronic Discovery Reference Model Project's Extensible Markup Language. This will improve interoperability to transfer ESI between applications in different phases of EDD from document acquisition to review.

Vendors at the conference also introduced law firms to concepts that have long been accepted in other industries. Exterro emphasized workflow tools in its Fusion Discovery Workflow Management product, which continues EDD support where its Fusion Legal Hold Management application leaves off. In addition, I see a new age for business intelligence in law.

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Source: law.com