Integreon

New Ways of Doing Business Emerging among Large Law Firms

by Liam Brown on February 8th, 2010 at 10:14 am : Comments 000

I read with interest Matt Sullivan’s blog post, LPO Industry Consolidation Underway? He offers a useful summary and analysis of recent deal-making among legal process outsourcing (LPO) providers.

Sullivan rightly concludes that legal cost control still looms large for many corporate law departments. We hear this in many conversations we have with both in-house and outside counsel. We also agree that Pillsbury’s publicly announcing an alliance called PEARL (press release, PEARL overview) that includes LPOs is significant. In the UK, that law firms publicize working with an LPO is almost old news; the same cannot be said for the US.

We expect more US law firms to discuss LPO - and many other new ways of doing business - in 2010. The 2008-9 crisis has ended. The end does not mean a return to pre-bust levels of activities. Rather, it means that most firms have taken the necessary emergency measures to cut costs. In our view, that’s the easy part, as painful as those cuts were. Now comes the hard part - prospering in the new normal.

Pre-bust, firms moved in lockstep. I don’t mean just how they compensated associates; few large firms considered any strategy or action not already widespread. Now, just as compensation models are changing, so too are firm strategies and actions. We see some firms hunker down with no clear plan to change. Others, however, such as Pillsbury, are taking active steps to offer clients more value.

My colleague Ron Friedmann wrote last November (at the Integreon blog) that Law Firms Differentiate in a New Era. The Pillsbury announcement is an example of firms differentiating. Not all firms will “do LPO” or form innovative alliances with other legal market players. We think that firms that don’t change both their client value proposition and operational model in significant ways are likely to lag behind their competitors who do innovate.

Our investors, as well as the investors in our competitors, understand this. The smart investors understood this pre-crash. Post-crash, it’s obvious of course. Outside capital will continue to flow to organizations that improve legal outcomes and reduce legal costs. In the UK, with The Legal Services Act, capital will likely soon flow directly to law firms. The combination of client demands, law firms themselves recognizing the need to change, and the availability of outside capital to support better ways of doing legal work will continue to alter the legal landscape.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Legal Economics, Legal Outsourcing (LPO)

Poll Results Released on Cloud Computing from Integreon’s Virtual LegalTech Webinar

by Jeff Fehrman on January 20th, 2010 at 2:52 pm : Comments 000

by Jeff Fehrman

Craig Ball, Tom Morrissey and I recently discussed The Challenge of Preserving and Collecting Evidence in a Cloud for a CLE webinar hosted at Virtual LegalTech. For those not familiar with Virtual Legaltech, it is ALM’s online version of the well known LegalTech New York and LegalTech West Coast events. One key difference though is that Virtual LegalTech is free to attend for qualified registrants.

Cloud Computing and its eDiscovery Implications is a Hot Topic

Our cloud computing webinar was the best-attended session of the day with nearly 300 “live” attendees. Subsequently, another 100 viewed the replay. The strong attendance relative to most in-person or webinar eDiscovery topics highlights that cloud computing, and social networking too, are a hot topic these days. Certainly over the past several months, the news media has been overflowing with reports on the subject, including recent decisions for the adoption of Google’s cloud-based services by the cities of Los Angeles and Orlando, and by Rentokil, a company with operations in 46 countries.

During the webinar, we asked three survey questions to see how the legal community views cloud computing. All were presented during our “live” session. The approximate 50 percent response rate – high in our experience with other webinars – is another indicator of the strong interest in both the legal and compliance implications of cloud computing. 

Cloud Computing Survey Results:

1. How familiar are you with cloud computing technology and techniques?

Total Responses Received = 122

This question establishes a kind of base line for our audience. Almost 4 in 10 respondents admitted to no familiarity with cloud computing. The rest of our responding audience at least knew a little about it, with 1 in 10 actually claiming stronger familiarity. Given all the recent news coverage and buzz about cloud computing, I was somewhat surprised that so many are ‘Not at all’ familiar. I suspect they had actually read something about it, and know it is a topic about which they should be familiar, and so attended this webinar to learn more.

Total Responses Received = 144

Here we see that 6 in 10 respondents say their organizations do use some form cloud computing; the most prominent usage being Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, such as Salesforce.com as an example.

Integreon has experience with its own hosted application called eView, used for legal document review during electronic discovery, along with experience involving a number of other ‘best-of-breed’ hosted applications we support. We see strong and growing client demand for hosted applications, which follows with a global trend we’ve seen toward greater adoption of outsourcing solutions in general, including cloud computing. See my colleague Debra Rozier’s recent blog post, E-Discovery: A Look at Insourcing vs. Outsourcing, for an intriguing perspective on IT outsourcing trends at law firms.

3. What is your main concern with considering adoption of cloud computing?

Total Responses Received = 125

The top concerns about cloud computing are control, security, confidentiality, and privacy. Keep in mind that these concerns are from an institutional perspective rather than an individual one, which might have resulted in privacy being top of mind. Interestingly though, availability of applications and IT governance were low concerns, which likely reflects more people in the legal market focusing on the legal and compliance implications for data that resides in the cloud. From reading published articles in IT and other news media, my sense is that outside of the legal market, the issue of availability (i.e. reliable access to the service) is a much greater concern.

Learning More about Cloud Computing and E-Discovery

To learn more about the eDiscovery implications of cloud computing, you can register to watch the recorded replay (free for qualified registrants) of the webinar. Once you register, you can also visit the conference anytime (24×7x365) to view other presentations, virtual booths, and blogs, and to engage in online networking and chatting with other attendees. Other webinar sessions feature experts and pundits such as Chris Dale, George Rudoy, and Monica Bay.

The next “live” day of Virtual LegalTech will be March 18, 2010. Maybe we’ll “bump” into each other and strike up a conversation (“chat”) at Integreon’s booth in the virtual exhibit hall or in the general lounge area.

If you’d like to meet with me in person, I will also be at LegalTech New York in early February 2010. You can stop by Integreon’s booth (#324) or reach out to me in advance on Twitter (where I regularly tweet about cloud computing, ediscovery, and computer forensics). My complete contact information (via vCard) is available on Virtual LegalTech too.

I would also be happy to hear your thoughts on the polling results reported here, or about Virtual Legaltech in general, so I encourage you to share your comments below.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Integreon Conference Presentations

E-Discovery: A Look at Insourcing vs. Outsourcing

by Debra Rozier on January 7th, 2010 at 1:53 pm : Comments 000

by Debra Rozier

George Rudoy provides an insightful look at the issue of insourcing vs. outsourcing for electronic discovery in his recent blog post, To Insource or To Outsource, at the Georgetown Law E-Discovery Law Blog. 

Rudoy writes that he has always believed in outsourcing of electronic data collection, processing, culling etc. Recently, however, “the ever-increasing pressures on the legal budgets of corporations and resulting pricing flexibility of law firms services once again raised a question of insourcing vs. outsourcing of the discovery services in general and data processing in particular.”

Rudoy cautions law firms thinking about insourcing e-discovery, noting multiple challenges such as managing processing capacity and demonstrating an ROI. We generally agree with his assessment and add two more cautionary notes of our own, one around technology, the other around pricing.

Technology Challenges

While “processing” remains a core e-discovery component, the steps to the ‘left and right’ on the EDRM model are growing in importance.  For example, Early Case Assessment (ECA) technology to perform data analytics (culling and finding the “right” documents for review) is rapidly growing ‘on the left’.

A combination of economics and the advantages of proximity to data storage devices likely will drive processing and ECA technology towards convergence in the form of tools that many companies will likely adopt in-house. For example, a blog post by the CEO of Clearwell, Not Yet A Gartner E-Discovery Magic Quadrant, But Still A Gartner E-Discovery MarketScope on 29 Dec 2009, discusses a recently released Gartner report. Gartner suggests that companies will increasingly bring e-discovery in-house.

But law firms that invest in bringing e-discovery in-house today could find that they do not achieve sufficient volume over the next couple of years to earn a return because their clients will increasingly rely on corporate resources. If not today, that risk will certainly exist by when the time arrives for the law firm to make further investments to keep its technology up-to-date.

Likewise ‘on the right’ of the EDRM, the tools to review documents after culling are also becoming more sophisticated. Vendors regularly upgrade the products they use and sell.

The history of technology in law firms suggests that firms usually lag behind in making upgrades. This is because firms often have their hands full and budgets maxed-out, which means they typically find themselves managing infrastructure as is. Investing in in-house e-discovery tools may commit these firms to technology platforms that quickly become obsolete. 

If in spite of these challenges law firms do want to bring technology in-house, then they should strive to invest in technologies that offer both internal deployment opportunities and a service based model. This integrated approach will enable the firms to manage smaller cases internally as they want to, and then as cases grow, they can then choose to leverage the same solution into a more highly scalable service-based (hosted) model. The firms will benefit from greater flexibility by utilizing the same application provider for both the internal and hosted solutions. The provider can also offer such firms a greater level of support infrastructure than the firms might be willing to invest in on a purely internal basis alone. 

Pricing Challenges

Our anecdotal sense is that some firms are also investing in in-house e-discovery platforms as a way of providing clients with “hidden discounts”. By absorbing a cost that would otherwise be a third-party disbursement or explicit line-item charge, firms can lower client costs without seeming to discount their rates. We’ve heard our friends in firms talk about offering their clients that “something extra”. But is this a good and a sustainable strategy? 

Is the “something extra” really just a price mechanism? Or does it commit a firm to a new set of deliverables that then brings up a set of risks independent of the legal advice clients seek? Bringing technology in-house can enhance service; but it can also create a new service level to meet, one that is prone to many known risks and one that the firms may not be fully equipped to handle. For example, consider the possible impact to project deadlines. Service providers usually have more products in their arsenal and can also scale their staff and infrastructure quickly as project needs increase. Will the law firms maintain this same level of efficiency? What starts as a pricing strategy can spiral into a big operational challenge.

Even aside from potential operational issues, firms may not reap the anticipated ‘price benefit’. Clients may not realize they are receiving a hidden discount. Even if they do, they may none-the-less bargain hard for rate caps. Firms could be at risk for giving away a service and still having to discount or cap their rates.  

Perhaps a bigger pricing risk is the move to alternative fee arrangements (AFA). In the AFA world, many fees may be fixed. With fixed fees, discounts are moot and firms will want to go with the lowest cost option, which usually means outsourcing.

A move to AFA also will lead to more unbundling of services, which means pricing components of matters separately. Smart clients will unbundle some components of matters such as e-discovery. If companies bid out e-discovery and document review separately, then an “in-house hidden discount” strategy just will not work.

Conclusion

We agree with George Rudoy and believe that the concept of law firms completely insourcing e-discovery ultimately lacks a sustainable ROI. A combination of scarce investment capital, technology challenges, capacity and resource utilization management, and pricing risks will drive the majority of firms to instead rely on outsourced solutions as the optimal and most sustainable approach for addressing the full range of their clients’ e-discovery requirements.

UPDATE January 11, 2009: Chris Dale of the eDisclosure Information Project blog recently commented on this post, in his post Outsourcer Integreon adds to Insource v Outsource discussion.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Legal Outsourcing (LPO), Outsourcing Tips

Can You Meet and Confer without an eDiscovery Expert on Hand?

by Babs Deacon on December 30th, 2009 at 2:07 pm : Comments 001

We already know just how important meet and confer is for electronic discovery. But, do you also know who should be at the meet and confer?

Here’s a pop quiz:

What makes a good meet and confer team?

(a) Crack team of e-discovery professionals
(b) Lone-wolf litigator
(c) Group of attorneys with varying levels of ESI acumen

Choice (a) would seem like a great answer, but unfortunately this answer is rarely the “final answer”.

I recently conducted an informal survey of ten high-profile, experienced e-discovery/litigation support professionals and found that four had never been to a Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 26(f) “Meet and Confer” meeting. The six who had done so averaged 3.8 meet and confers per person since the amended rules took effect in December 2006, over the last three years.

All ten e-discovery professionals believe their firms are missing out on an opportunity to tap their skills and experience. Of course, many practicing attorneys have become proficient in matters involving electronically stored information (ESI) or are themselves e-discovery professionals. However, most litigators can benefit from specialists who spend their days ‘living and breathing’ e-discovery.

A practicing attorney may be a brilliant strategist, possess a photographic memory of case law, and have superlative negotiation skills, but may not know the nuts and bolts of ESI management. Many e-discovery failures are the result of seemingly small details or technological nuances. It is for these details and nuances that the litigation support professional serves as an invaluable member of the case team.

The FRCP implicitly supports the idea that e-discovery professionals should be part of the team. For example, Rule 26(a)2(B) sets standards for data accessibility (“not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost”). The e-discovery professional is well placed to help assess the practical factors that govern application of this standard. This person is familiar with not only with various IT infrastructure scenarios but typically has a wealth of experience organizing collections and even personally collecting data from multiple systems. More importantly, the e-discovery professional is usually the person at the firm who is most familiar with budgeting for discovery projects and so understands the associated costs of access.

Beyond the question of accessibility, litigation support and e-discovery professionals can also help lawyers negotiate appropriate search terms. This idea is supported in the FRCP comments, which state:

“The volume of – and the ability to search – much electronically stored information means that in many cases the responding party will be able to produce information from reasonably accessible sources that will fully satisfy the parties’ discovery needs. In many circumstances the requesting party should obtain and evaluate the information from such sources before insisting that the responding party search and produce information contained on sources that are not reasonably accessible…”

Defensible search and care in specifying search terms and strategy have received much press of late. I believe the message is that e-discovery data analytics and sophisticated search are professional disciplines. Certainly Magistrate Judge Facciola has made this point strongly in U.S. v. Michael John O’Keefe, 2008 WL 449729 (D.D.C.) where he noted  that establishing the appropriate search terms:

“is a complicated question involving the interplay, at least, of the sciences of computer technology, statistics, and linguistics… Given this complexity, … [t]his topic is clearly beyond the ken of a layman and requires that any such conclusion be based on evidence that, for example, meets the criteria of Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.”

I believe that by “layman,” Judge Facciola meant an IT professional or attorney who is not familiar with the complexity of searching ESI. The layman won’t be conversant with sophisticated Boolean, proximity and meta data search syntax, let alone the pitfalls inherent in different email platforms, file types, storage architecture and data bases.

Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander, Northern District of Mississippi, recently “imposed” an electronic discovery expert on defendants in, In Maggette, et. al. v. BL Development Corp., et. al., 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 116789 (N.D. Miss. Nov. 24, 2009). Not only making the case for appropriate preparation but participation by someone with the appropriate skills.

Why not have the e-discovery professional attend the 26(f) conference in order to prevent the parties from agreeing to a flawed search method or even a list of overly-broad search terms? The FRCP committee commented:

“Whether a responding party is required to preserve unsearched sources of potentially responsive information that it believes are not reasonably accessible depends on the circumstances of each case. It is often useful for the parties to discuss this issue early in discovery.”

“In appropriate cases identification of, and early discovery from, individuals with special knowledge of a party’s computer systems may be helpful.”

These statements from the FRCP clearly make the case for early participation by an
e-discovery professional. A 26(f) team without an ESI resource may lack key skills, including:

• An understanding of forms of production including paper, TIFF and various native and metadata formats
• Familiarity with document retention policies and litigation hold compliance, methods and applications
• A technical understanding of collection issues including when and how to perform forensic work
• Custodian interview management skills
• Early Case Assessment acumen
• Ability to draft data maps
• Search, data analytics and ESI culling methods
• A focused understanding of IT infrastructure from the production perspective
• Personal knowledge of reliable ESI vendors/service providers
• Project management and deadline management experience
• Budget, budget, budget

If a litigator doesn’t feel comfortable bringing his firm’s e-discovery support expert to the meet and confer, certainly preparation for the 26(f) should be enhanced with the e-discovery professional’s participation. The unfortunate experience of many e-discovery professionals is that the litigator calls up saying, “We’re having the meet and confer tomorrow…”, effectively short circuiting any contribution the e-discovery professional could make.

I feel certain that although not specifically mentioned, the Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation encourages attorneys to cooperate within the case team consisting of both inside and outside counsel, paralegals, IT and e-discovery professionals.

The proclamation mentions, in passing, the participation by non-attorneys, in discovery techniques. (“Part III: Tools - Developing and distributing practical ‘toolkits’ to train and support lawyers, judges, other professionals, and students in techniques of discovery cooperation, collaboration, and transparency.”)

In answer to the pop quiz for which this blog post is titled, ‘no’ – you cannot have an effective meet and confer without the benefit of the presence, or at least input, of an e-discovery specialist.

Many industry experts also believe that legal budgets in 2010 are likely to stay flat or continue to shrink. Therefore, in-house counsel remain under tremendous cost-control pressure. A good way to minimize the risk of going over budget is to plan carefully and gain control over the data and search strategy as early as possible. The best way to do that is by bringing in the appropriate experts to the all-critical meet and confer sessions.

[For a lighter look at the future of EDD, see my guest blog post, Delatio Electrics (by Babs Deacon), at the EDD Update blog.]

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD)

Coming E-Discovery Battle between Vendors and Firms?

by Ron Friedmann on November 17th, 2009 at 10:25 am : Comments 001

Economic hardship has forced general counsels to cut costs. Most large law firms have, in turn, laid-off lawyers and staff and acquiesced to demands for alternative fee arrangements. Some firms are also actively re-shaping their “value propositions”; for example, many firms aim to become end-to-end e-discovery providers.

UPS Cuts Costs With E-Discovery Counsel (Corporate Counsel, 11 Nov 2009), describes King & Spalding’s “cradle-to-grave solution” for e-discovery at UPS. Separately, off-the-record reports suggest that many law firms want to provide an integrated, one-stop e-discovery solution for clients. This is a big change; previously, most firms were content merely to counsel clients on the law, rely on vendors to do the work, and supervise the overall process.

Firms likely will succeed in this only if they partner with EDD vendors. Law firms have the advantage in counseling clients on legal strategy and e-discovery issues. When it comes to providing integrated e-discovery service, however, law firms have several disadvantages relative to vendors:

• Art vs. Industry. BigLaw has long asserted that “everything we do is art” and cannot be standardized. That mentality works against the industrial strength processes (e.g., rigorous metrics and QC) and disciplined project management that high-quality and cost-effective e-discovery service requires.
• Sub-scale. Most law firms simply do not have the necessary scale to flex up and down to manage the peaks and troughs of e-discovery processing / hosting and document review. Large vendors can better manage the fluctuations because they aggregate demand across multiple firms and clients. Scale also limits most firms’ ability to stay on the leading edge of EDD technology by developing proprietary technology and/or evaluating and running multiple third-party platforms.
• Declining Unit Pricing. E-discovery and document review is moving to unit pricing that is declining over time. Vendors don’t like falling prices but have mechanisms to cope. BigLaw partners, in contrast, have enough trouble moving beyond the billable hour much less lowering fees. Law firm DNA makes it hard to deal with the current EDD trends.
• Scarce Investment Capital. Exploding data volumes require ever more servers and software licenses. That means capital. Law firm investment has typically meant “any outlay that cannot be billed to to a client in the same month.” Law firms have never been well-capitalized and, in the current economic environment, loans are difficult to obtain and costly. So  it’s not clear how firms will fund growing their EDD infrastructure and keeping it state of the art. Well-managed and well-capitalized vendors are accustomed to on-going investment to keep and grow business.

Nonetheless, I think that law firms will continue to play a critical role in managing clients’ EDD requirements. Their best path is to focus on their core legal strength and their deep relationship with clients. For the heavy lifting of e-discovery and document review, most firms will find it easiest and best to partner with vendors.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Legal Economics, Legal Outsourcing (LPO)

Autumn in St. Paul, Evergreen at the EDRM Mid-Year Meeting

by Babs Deacon on October 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm : Comments 000

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) project, founded by George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, last week held its mid-year meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. Autumn was clearly evident all around, which I thought an interesting contrast with the EDRM’s “evergreen” approach to ensuring that the Electronic Discovery Reference Model is always current, practical and relevant. The organization brings together a wide range of industry professionals in a non-profit group with the goal of developing (and continually refreshing) “guidelines and standards for e-discovery consumers and providers”. As co-chair on the EDRM’s Evergreen committee, here are my thoughts and observations from our mid-year meeting.

Everyone was pleased that EDRM has now debuted a new, much easier-on-the-eyes, www.EDRM.net. All EDRM working groups use this site to highlight completed content. The site also consolidates a lot of past research and standards materials. In addition, the EDRM launched a new Twitter feed via @EDRM to facilitate broader awareness about the organization’s on-going activities and accomplishments. (Speaking of Twitter, follow Integreon via @IntegreonEDD and me, personally, via @Babfab.)

The main action during the mid-year meeting took place in the working group discussions.  Here are some highlights:

An updated sample e-discovery data set

The Data Set Working Group reported on extensive collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a US-government agency that sets many technical standards, including for the SHA-1 algorithm used in data (file) de-duplication. (And yes, the MD-5 hash is still commonly used as well).

NIST also maintains a database of known operating system files, program files and other non-user file types. Vendors and legal organizations that process data use the “NIST list” to help “separate the wheat from the chaff”. That is, a simple step to reduce data volume requiring review is to eliminate from data sets all of the program and other files that do not contain user data. This process does not rely on file names or extensions, but rather on digital signatures.

Because of collaborating with the NIST, the Data Set group has gained a much better understanding of NIST objectives and processes for determining which file types get added to their list, the methods for updating such lists, and even some considerations for maintaining chain of custody. Understanding why many file types don’t make it onto the NIST’s list has helped the Data Set group develop a strategy for targeting additional file types that should be included in the EDRM’s e-discovery test data set. The term “de-Nist” was used extensively by the working group team leaders in reference to the process for removing non-user files from data sets. Interestingly, the NIST itself had never actually heard this term before, but NIST participants were pleasantly surprised to learn of its existence, as well as its importance as an e-discovery term of art.

Standardized metrics for e-discovery

The Metrics Working Group completed a Quick Start Guide and a number of tool templates, including ones for ROI tools, ECA cost estimation, collection and review tracking, and data mapping. The group helped build some new American Bar Association (ABA) tools, and helped in jumpstarting the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Oversight Committee’s e-discovery code set. LEDES is a data standard that law firms and client law departments use to exchange billing information (“e-billing”); with the growing cost of EDD, the goal is to extend LEDES to include more EDD detail.

Searching

Participation in the Search Working Group has mushroomed, going from twenty-eight to eight-six members since earlier this year. The group’s Search guide has been one of the EDRM website’s most popular downloads. Additional resources are planned in the next six months, including XML formatted Search Specifications and a guide to Search Metrics. This group’s goal is to provide a framework for defining and managing various aspects of search – for example, features used in culling and review – to enable more predictable and complete results.

Introducing the Information Management Reference Model (IMRM) Project

The six month old Information Management Working Group has embarked on an Information Management Reference Model project, as a corollary to the existing EDRM model. The team was excited to report that twenty percent of the participants on this project are Records Management professionals. The group’s work is intended to provide a common, practical, flexible framework to help organizations develop and implement effective and actionable information management programs.

Code of Conduct

The Model Code of Conduct Working Group has been working hard on many thorny issues surrounding professional conduct and has just released a draft copy of recommended guidelines for software and services providers. If I weren’t working so much in the Evergreen group, I’d love to get more involved in this. The work being done here is driving development of standard ethical practices for e-discovery.

Sprucing things up

The Evergreen Working Group has a lot to show for its hard work too over these last six months. Our goal is to keep all content across working groups as current as possible. Our sub-committees got together and promoted as much content from working groups up to the website as possible. We really wanted to tie up loose ends and fill in all the blanks. This work, which is still in progress, falls under the umbrella of the Evergreen Content subgroup and should be completed by the Spring meeting. John Turner (Anacomp) was sorely missed at the mid-year meeting, due to a scheduling conflict, but his work on the Review and Analysis stages was warmly appreciated.

The Evergreen Standardize subgroup got off to a roaring start. This group aims to redesign EDRM.net for easier access to content and also to help EDRM participants stay up-to-date with what’s going on in their respective projects.

And now for the Gossip

• The walleye-cake appetizers were surprisingly good.
• George Socha is building a cinder-block bread oven in his backyard.
• We lost some EDRM participants because of the sagging job market. In light of economic stress, EDRM now waives membership fees for individuals who do lose their job, so hopefully this will help. For more information on EDRM memberships, click here.
• There was some prognosticating about future judicial participation in defining
  e-discovery best practices. When it does or doesn’t happen, I’ll hand out the
  ESI-Psychic Award.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD)

Conferences Go Virtual - And Have eDiscovery Implications

by Eric Feistel on September 28th, 2009 at 12:20 pm : Comments 001

By Ron Friedmann and Eric Feistel

“Virtually attending” a conference is increasingly popular, enabled by both official and unofficial social media and video “feeds”. We experienced this first-hand at the recent International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference. We report here on our experience and on the potential e-discovery implications.

ILTA hosted its first Virtual Exhibit Hall with roundtable discussions, and its first live streaming video interviews over ILTA TV. In addition, many individual attendees thumbed “tweets” on Blackberries, iPhones, and other smart gadgets, or shared their latest “pics” and “vids” from an inspiring keynote address, educational session, or other conference related event. Participation at a distance was easy via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and video feeds, including a complete video walk-through of the exhibit hall posted on YouTube by “Twitterer” Ed Valio, who also put together a nice picture album of the event.

Most of the online traffic reported presentation highlights. By many accounts, knowledge management expert and Above and Beyond KM blogger V Mary Abraham provided the best real time Twitter feed at @VMaryAbraham. Others chose the more “traditional” blogging route; for example, Integreon’s Ron Friedmann posted some detailed reports at session-end: e.g., Technologies that Will Disrupt Traditional Legal Practice (ILTA 2009). Some online traffic, however, was more “local”: Monica Bay of Law Technology News, for example, Tweeted that “everything Babs sez about the nachos is true,” commenting on advice from Integreon’s Babs Deacon. For transcripts of all the Twitter traffic that either mentioned “ILTA” or “ILTA09″, you can take a look at JD Supra’s Law Practice News Facebook page, which aggregated such Tweets on a daily basis during the conference.

We were intrigued at the video explosion too. ILTA-TV, sponsored by ILTA and produced by ii3, Inc., had a professional studio set-up across from the registration booth and conducted many live sessions and some taped ones. Integreon’s Ron Friedmann offered insight into key legal outsourcing considerations during a 5-minute ILTA TV interview with host Shy Alter. Thomson Reuters also interviewed several attendees using a hand-held camcorder, posting edited versions within a day. Ron’s one-minute segment on law firm billing trends is at Thomson Reuters’ Legal Current blog.

Integreon itself generated good online buzz. Our reception featured blogger Charles Christian of Orange Rag / Legal Technology Insider fame, who entertained with a lively comedy routine (and no, it was not about legal technology). During his performance, some of our guests Twittered away, including blogger extraordinaire Gabe Acevedo, of Gabe’s Guide to the e-Discovery Universe, and also Inside Legal, a co-sponsor of the 2009 ILTA technology purchasing survey. Of course, in good Twitter etiquette, we reciprocated those “tweets” with “retweets” from our own Twitter feed, IntegreonEDD.

While all this new technology has obvious benefits, it does carry some risks. Integreon has a sizable e-discovery business so we are very aware that any recorded information is potentially subject to discovery. “Those who have embraced the various forms of social networking seem to be on the forefront of Enterprise 2.0 communications and technology,” said Jeff Fehrman, Integreon’s VP of Forensics and Consulting. “More collaborative forms of digital text communications are rapidly evolving that closely mirror the speed and feel of dialog that traditionally has only been possible in person or on the phone. Because these discussions could be relevant to litigation, the implication for electronic discovery is an area of great interest for legal technologists like me.” Not surprisingly, this topic was the theme of several ILTA sessions. Video (and audio) recordings are also subject to discovery and pose their own set of challenges to manage and review. While we don’t expect any ILTA content to likely be targeted for discovery, the explosion of social media and video in the corporate context certainly does raise challenges for information governance and e-discovery management.

To close, we note that some conferences now dispense with any physical presence.  ALM, sponsor of LegalTech, has announced a Virtual LegalTech Conference. This conference + exhibit hall runs around the clock; in addition, there are quarterly “live webinar” days with multiple sessions offering complimentary CLE education. One of the live webinars on November 19, 2009, the kick-off day, will be The Challenge of Preserving and Collecting Evidence in a Cloud, featuring Integreon’s Jeff Fehrman and the renowned e-discovery consultant and commentator Craig Ball. Like social media, cloud computing is another hot EDD topic, so be sure to mark your calendar for this event. For details on how to register for Virtual Legal Tech, click here. We look forward to seeing you there, virtually that is.

[For readers interested in learning more about e-discovery, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter @IntegreonEDD.]

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Integreon Conference Presentations, Integreon in the News

Law Firm Embraces Change in Discovery Model and Cost Management

by Matthew Banks on August 13th, 2009 at 2:18 pm : Comments 000

O’Melveny & Myers LLP, a global law firm, and H5, an information retrieval services firm, announced on 3 August an alliance that will provide O’Melveny clients with an alternative to traditional search methods for document discovery, review and analysis. Under the alliance, O’Melveny and H5 will work collaboratively with O’Melveny clients to consider possible applications of H5’s search functionality. The aim is to reduce cost and increase efficiency.

As my colleague Ron Friedmann suggested in his personal blog post, A BigLaw Watershed: O’Melveny Partners with H5 for EDD, this may be the first such public announcement from a BigLaw firm. The trend towards new approaches to cost-effective discovery, however, especially incorporating advanced technology, is clear. “Our clients face rapidly increasing litigation costs fueled in part by the mounting expense of document review,” said Richard Goetz, Chair of O’Melveny’s Class Actions practice group (see press release). He succinctly captures the central issue driving law firm thinking. 

An increasing number of major law firms are reacting to the budget constraints faced by their corporate clients.  They recognize the increasing competition among law firms in this down market and that the traditional delivery model, with its enormous costs, is unsustainable. Innovative firms are exploring methodologies available from specialist EDD providers.

The huge cost pressure represents a threat and opportunity for law firms in the competitive landscape. An array of processes and technologies to reduce cost are readily available.  If firms ignore these tools, their corporate clients will adopt them directly or turn to providers who offer them. O’Melveny appears to recognize this, has publicly stated so, and is taking advantage of the opportunity.

In our experience, however, technology is only part of the answer.  Irrespective of the review tool a litigation team chooses, they will be left with a sizable number of documents that require human review. General counsels need to consider carefully the most appropriate resource to conduct reviews. Options include law firm associates or staff attorneys, contract or temp lawyers that they or their outside counsel retain and manage, or offshore review teams (often working with onshore teams). With offshore review now well established and validated, an increasing number of corporations are using offshore review teams to further contain cost. And law firms are starting to respond in kind, also offering an offshore review alternative in some cases.

We see the law firm thinking evolving, with more and more offering offshore or multi shore document review and deploying data analytics or a more holistic integrated approach to discovery. But the common trend is clear: manage cost (i.e. reduce cost and make cost more predictable) by managing the volume of data that funnels into review and delivering review at a lower cost while ensuring a defensible production. Clearly, the greatest savings come from leveraging both technology and global managed review options.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD), Legal Economics, Legal Outsourcing (LPO)

One Bump in the US E-Discovery Market with a Happy Ending

by Eric Feistel on June 5th, 2009 at 12:38 pm : Comments 000

Although e-discovery in the US is still a growth market, the economic crisis has caused some turmoil. Some vendors have closed, others have been sold, and some experts have lost their jobs.  One of those experts, Babs Deacon, now works for Integreon as Director of Consulting, Data Analytics.  Babs tells the story of her recent job search in an article she wrote, EDD Staffing: Pink to Green, for the June 2009 edition of Law Technology News (and featured in LTN’s Daily Alert on June 2, 2009). For EDD professionals who are looking for work or thinking about a job change, this is recommended reading. Aside from good advice, it is an amusing story. 

In addition, LTN’s Monica Bay interviews Babs about her job hunting experiences in a Law Technology Now podcast, Greening Your Career: Surviving after a Layoff, available on Legal Talk Network.

For those attending the upcoming LegalTech West Coast conference in Los Angeles, Babs will be speaking on June 25, 2009 during the Greening Your Career networking breakfast. The breakfast will be hosted by Monica Bay and will feature a panel of experts in an upbeat discussion for members of the legal community who may be looking for jobs.

(Be sure to also visit Integreon at booth 208 during LegalTech West Coast to learn about our integrated discovery solutions.)

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD)

What Happens in St. Paul, Doesn’t Stay in St. Paul

by Babs Deacon on May 26th, 2009 at 3:28 pm : Comments 000

EDRM, the e-discovery industry’s “think tank”, started its 2009-2010 working year in St. Paul, Minn. with a much anticipated kick-off meeting held May 13-14th. Participants reconvened from the 2008-2009 season to report their progress and to plan the direction for the next twelve months. EDRM organizes its work into distinct project groups and the attendees spend most of the two days meeting with their project teams, organizing and drafting content. Before reporting on my own involvement in the Evergreen project, a few observations from the meeting overall…

EDRM added two new projects this year, Information Management and Jobs. Information Management as its own project was an obvious evolution. It had been part of the Evergreen group but the topic has grown enough to warrant its own focus. The Jobs project is a timely response to the current economic situation plus the addition of recruiters to the attendee mix certainly made for a more entertaining conference. I’m not saying that e-discovery “geeks” don’t like to party, but if I’m going to be in a bar in the Midwest, it’s more fun if Michael Potters and David Cowen are there. Michael for example is a real people magnet and I think he managed to get jobs for some folks staying at the St. Paul Hotel who weren’t even in e-discovery.

Eric Mandel, Director of E-Discovery and Litigation Support with Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel & Mason LLP and the Chairman of the Model Code of Conduct Project, is back on the law firm side having completed a long stint in vendor-land. The MCOC project is immensely stimulating, having many “nooks and crannies”. The one-year-old group is finishing up their first round of content and has made a plea for comments and suggestions from the rest of EDRM and from the general public. The group’s goal is to develop aspirational voluntary ethical guidelines for electronic discovery providers and consumers that will be similar to those under which attorneys, court personnel and others in the legal space operate.

Eric offered this interesting take on being back on the procurement side, “No matter how much vendors may think they understand their law firm clients, there is no way they can fully empathize with the cost pressures law firms are facing now from their clients. I used to think when I was on the vendor side that if I could sell value, then I could get the law firm to leave price as an afterthought.”

Courtney Gray, VP/Technology/Partner with Nextpoint, “spent a fair amount of ‘cocktail party’ time with the Data Group at ERDM’s semi-annual conference, learning more about their unique challenges. I gained a much clearer understanding regarding securing a pristine data set — one which has not been processed, deduped and culled to the point of uselessness in testing.”

My role in the EDRM is co-Chair on The Evergreen Project, one of the longest standing projects, which has now refocused its efforts on making the current EDRM content more useable. Evergreen is primarily concerned with ensuring that the Electronic Discovery Reference Model remains current, practical and relevant; enhancing the content at each node of the Model; and educating about how to make effective use of the Model. Our efforts may include guides on how to apply the model in practice such as with examples of usage scenarios.

There will be a flurry of activity this spring to make sure all content makes its way to www.edrm.net. This will be followed by an all out assault on the “use-ability” of the site. The EDRM membership as a whole has acknowledged that it is very hard to find information on the website in its current incarnation and so the Evergreen project has taken on the job of redesigning, auditing, linking, standardizing, and testing each component from the non-EDRM member point of view. I’m sure our group is up to the challenge. Quoting Evergreen member Josh Byrne, “I have been impressed with the level of passion for the topic, and the number of members who participate from one year to the next.”

One of the highest notes during the conference was the acknowledgement of Jason Velasco’s continuing service to EDRM and particularly for his three years as the Chair of the Evergreen Project. Florinda Baldridge, Project Management leader, outdid herself by creating a mock Law Technology News Cover to honor Jason. It was presented during the Wednesday night dinner and everyone enjoyed it. Thank you again, Jason!

Babs Deacon is the Director of Consulting and Data Analytics with Integreon and a co-Chair of The EDRM Evergreen Project.

Filed under E-Discovery (EDD)