Integreon

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.