Posted by Mark Brousseau
The chief information officer increasingly is joining the chief council in setting e-Discovery strategy within government organizations. That's according to a survey by USIS, an Altegrity company, conducted among government leaders from the federal e-Discovery community.
Among the other findings of the survey:
• Information management, data collection, and producing discoverable results in a timely manner are major concerns.
• More than one-third of respondents said the preservation and collection stage of electronic data discovery (EDD) needs the most improvement.
• Organizations that place a strong emphasis on the EDD process and strategy tend to have better e-Discovery processes.
• Among respondents whose organizations do not place an emphasis on the EDD process, not a single one reported being satisfied with their e-Discovery process.
“This survey reinforces how important it is to have good information management practices in place for the e-Discovery program and the burden it can place on a team when those practices simply aren’t there,” notes Michael Santelli, president of USIS’ Information Management Division (LABAT). “Being proactive about managing data can also save money. It is not uncommon to hear that the cost of one litigation would have paid for the technology and services to better manage the data.”
What do you think?
Showing posts with label e-discovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label e-discovery. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
E-Discovery: Addressing the Risks
By Rich Walsh of Viewpointe
At the heart of many risks facing companies today lurks e-discovery – the locating and accessing of electronically stored information (ESI) for purposes of litigation. ESI can be any electronically stored information – documents, emails, databases, etc. – potentially for use as evidence by lawyers in legal cases.
Compounding the risk to companies is the volume of data subject to e-discovery. In fact, the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, a group dedicated to dealing with this problem, calls the deluge of electronically stored material used as evidence in civil actions the single biggest storyline in the legal world today.
In a recent cross-industry report commissioned by the Deloitte Forensic Center, “E-Discovery: Mitigating Risk Through Better Communication,” just 43 percent of the respondents felt that their companies were somewhat up for the e-discovery challenge. The report notes that in the e-discovery process legal, IT and other departments – those that don’t normally work together – are often thrown together “in a room” to do a difficult job under quite a bit of pressure. And with a lack of common language and systems among these groups, it only further muddies the process.
Where is all of this leading? The Deloitte report found that 49 percent of respondents expect their company’s IT department to have to work more on e-discovery efforts in the near future. So, on top of IT’s workload and limited budgets, adding new e-discovery work will further challenge their priorities. In preparation, companies will need to figure out, sooner than later, where (and even if) they have stored and can easily retrieve everything they might need to produce.
I’d love to hear from TAWPI members as how your companies may be preparing for this challenge. Any tips for colleagues? Share with us.
Rich Walsh is president, Document Archive & Repository Services at Viewpointe. He has more than 25 years of operational information technology experience.
At the heart of many risks facing companies today lurks e-discovery – the locating and accessing of electronically stored information (ESI) for purposes of litigation. ESI can be any electronically stored information – documents, emails, databases, etc. – potentially for use as evidence by lawyers in legal cases.
Compounding the risk to companies is the volume of data subject to e-discovery. In fact, the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, a group dedicated to dealing with this problem, calls the deluge of electronically stored material used as evidence in civil actions the single biggest storyline in the legal world today.
In a recent cross-industry report commissioned by the Deloitte Forensic Center, “E-Discovery: Mitigating Risk Through Better Communication,” just 43 percent of the respondents felt that their companies were somewhat up for the e-discovery challenge. The report notes that in the e-discovery process legal, IT and other departments – those that don’t normally work together – are often thrown together “in a room” to do a difficult job under quite a bit of pressure. And with a lack of common language and systems among these groups, it only further muddies the process.
Where is all of this leading? The Deloitte report found that 49 percent of respondents expect their company’s IT department to have to work more on e-discovery efforts in the near future. So, on top of IT’s workload and limited budgets, adding new e-discovery work will further challenge their priorities. In preparation, companies will need to figure out, sooner than later, where (and even if) they have stored and can easily retrieve everything they might need to produce.
I’d love to hear from TAWPI members as how your companies may be preparing for this challenge. Any tips for colleagues? Share with us.
Rich Walsh is president, Document Archive & Repository Services at Viewpointe. He has more than 25 years of operational information technology experience.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
How Technology Came to Rule the Legal World
By James D. Shook, Esq.
Director of E-Discovery and Compliance
EMC Corporation
Ten years ago, few people, even lawyers, knew much about electronic discovery (e-discovery)—the process of finding, preserving, processing, and producing electronic information that is relevant to a legal dispute. Today, it’s difficult to find anyone who is not at least conversant with the concept, thanks to many high-profile cases and countless articles in both IT and legal journals. And yet even with all of the changes that we have already seen, the next ten years are likely to produce even more.
An extra “e” transforms “discovery”
The U.S. legal system requires that each party in a civil dispute provide the other party with all information, both good and bad, that is relevant to the case. This part of the litigation process is called discovery.
In the “old days”—which in technology terms means before 2000—the discovery process focused primarily on paper documents such as contracts, notes, files, and correspondence, including letters and memoranda. As businesses began using more technology, especially e-mail, the majority of that information shifted from paper to electronic format, and e-discovery was born.
The rules of discovery never specifically included—or excluded—electronic data, creating inconsistencies and confusion. To address this issue, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended in December 2006 to specifically include electronic data, defined as electronically stored information or ESI. Although the FRCP only governs disputes in federal courts, it strongly influences state courts, and the rules spread quickly.
Almost overnight, IT systems such as e-mail servers became concerns for lawyers, many of whom are notoriously techno-phobic. Organizations that failed to meet their e-discovery obligations faced the risk of embarrassing and costly sanctions from the courts. Simply collecting and preserving everything was cost-prohibitive. A frequently cited study found that it costs almost $20,000 to have lawyers review a single gigabyte of data (which may seem reasonable since 1 GB represents about 75,000 pages). Extrapolating those costs across hundreds of gigabytes, or even a terabyte or more of data, scared most organizations—and they started looking for a better way to manage both the e-discovery process and their electronic information.
E-discovery strategies at work, today
Organizations that lead the way in e-discovery best practices are attacking the problem in two ways. First, by managing data more centrally and efficiently, they can responsibly delete data that has no value, or which they are under no obligation to retain. Not only does this practice improve the e-discovery process, but it also creates significant savings for storage, backup, and personnel costs.
The second part of this strategy is to bring some—or all—of the e-discovery process in-house. To do this, organizations are creating cross-functional teams that include both IT and Legal, and then deploying technologies that enable fast and efficient in-place search and collection of their ESI.
Yet even today there are many organizations that have done little to address these requirements. Because e-discovery is not a voluntary process, many unprepared organizations perform “faux e-discovery”—they attempt to meet their obligations, but in reality miss significant amounts of relevant data. In doing so, they are taking on significant risk, without understanding or acknowledging it. Other organizations that fail to prepare are forced to turn to expert (and expensive) third-party vendors, frequently spending several hundred thousand to well over a million dollars to respond to a single case—without any ongoing benefit.
More data, more technologies, more challenges, more solutions
The continuing explosion in the amount and varying types of data will continue to significantly impact the e-discovery landscape. With studies noting that we will have 35 zetabytes of data created by 2020, even good processes may be totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume.
In addition, technologies that enhance the speed and efficiency of communication and businesses processes continue to be developed—and they are usually not e-discovery-friendly. Social media technologies such as Facebook and Twitter are further blurring the line between personal and business data, which can be difficult for organizations to locate and preserve. Cloud computing can put a company’s data in the hands of a third party, sometimes in a different country or jurisdiction, which also makes e-discovery more difficult.
But technology is also likely to provide solutions, such as intelligent filtering and review of data. There are tools today that can classify and determine whether documents are relevant to a case based on their similarity to other relevant documents or other criteria. But those technologies are new and complex, and their acceptance in actual court proceedings is not assured.
With all of these issues on the horizon—and certainly more that we cannot yet predict—the next 10 years in e-discovery will be every bit as interesting as the last.
As director of e-discovery and compliance at EMC Corporation, James D. Shook, Esq. works with customers to help them solve challenges related to e-discovery, compliance and privacy. James is a long-time member of The Sedona Conference, a well-known legal think tank, and is an active contributor on several of its committees.
Director of E-Discovery and Compliance
EMC Corporation
Ten years ago, few people, even lawyers, knew much about electronic discovery (e-discovery)—the process of finding, preserving, processing, and producing electronic information that is relevant to a legal dispute. Today, it’s difficult to find anyone who is not at least conversant with the concept, thanks to many high-profile cases and countless articles in both IT and legal journals. And yet even with all of the changes that we have already seen, the next ten years are likely to produce even more.
An extra “e” transforms “discovery”
The U.S. legal system requires that each party in a civil dispute provide the other party with all information, both good and bad, that is relevant to the case. This part of the litigation process is called discovery.
In the “old days”—which in technology terms means before 2000—the discovery process focused primarily on paper documents such as contracts, notes, files, and correspondence, including letters and memoranda. As businesses began using more technology, especially e-mail, the majority of that information shifted from paper to electronic format, and e-discovery was born.
The rules of discovery never specifically included—or excluded—electronic data, creating inconsistencies and confusion. To address this issue, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended in December 2006 to specifically include electronic data, defined as electronically stored information or ESI. Although the FRCP only governs disputes in federal courts, it strongly influences state courts, and the rules spread quickly.
Almost overnight, IT systems such as e-mail servers became concerns for lawyers, many of whom are notoriously techno-phobic. Organizations that failed to meet their e-discovery obligations faced the risk of embarrassing and costly sanctions from the courts. Simply collecting and preserving everything was cost-prohibitive. A frequently cited study found that it costs almost $20,000 to have lawyers review a single gigabyte of data (which may seem reasonable since 1 GB represents about 75,000 pages). Extrapolating those costs across hundreds of gigabytes, or even a terabyte or more of data, scared most organizations—and they started looking for a better way to manage both the e-discovery process and their electronic information.
E-discovery strategies at work, today
Organizations that lead the way in e-discovery best practices are attacking the problem in two ways. First, by managing data more centrally and efficiently, they can responsibly delete data that has no value, or which they are under no obligation to retain. Not only does this practice improve the e-discovery process, but it also creates significant savings for storage, backup, and personnel costs.
The second part of this strategy is to bring some—or all—of the e-discovery process in-house. To do this, organizations are creating cross-functional teams that include both IT and Legal, and then deploying technologies that enable fast and efficient in-place search and collection of their ESI.
Yet even today there are many organizations that have done little to address these requirements. Because e-discovery is not a voluntary process, many unprepared organizations perform “faux e-discovery”—they attempt to meet their obligations, but in reality miss significant amounts of relevant data. In doing so, they are taking on significant risk, without understanding or acknowledging it. Other organizations that fail to prepare are forced to turn to expert (and expensive) third-party vendors, frequently spending several hundred thousand to well over a million dollars to respond to a single case—without any ongoing benefit.
More data, more technologies, more challenges, more solutions
The continuing explosion in the amount and varying types of data will continue to significantly impact the e-discovery landscape. With studies noting that we will have 35 zetabytes of data created by 2020, even good processes may be totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume.
In addition, technologies that enhance the speed and efficiency of communication and businesses processes continue to be developed—and they are usually not e-discovery-friendly. Social media technologies such as Facebook and Twitter are further blurring the line between personal and business data, which can be difficult for organizations to locate and preserve. Cloud computing can put a company’s data in the hands of a third party, sometimes in a different country or jurisdiction, which also makes e-discovery more difficult.
But technology is also likely to provide solutions, such as intelligent filtering and review of data. There are tools today that can classify and determine whether documents are relevant to a case based on their similarity to other relevant documents or other criteria. But those technologies are new and complex, and their acceptance in actual court proceedings is not assured.
With all of these issues on the horizon—and certainly more that we cannot yet predict—the next 10 years in e-discovery will be every bit as interesting as the last.
As director of e-discovery and compliance at EMC Corporation, James D. Shook, Esq. works with customers to help them solve challenges related to e-discovery, compliance and privacy. James is a long-time member of The Sedona Conference, a well-known legal think tank, and is an active contributor on several of its committees.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
2009 Promises Major Changes
By Mark Brousseau
2009 will bring significant changes to content technology marketplaces, according to independent technology evaluation company, CMS Watch (www.cmswatch.com).
“Obviously the economic slump will continue to influence buyers and vendors,” observes CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne, “but other technology developments – including the rise of mobile analytics and a new version of MS SharePoint – will also significantly affect enterprise calculations.”
CMS Watch offers twelve predictions:
1. Open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) players get an initial boost
2. Office14 casts long shadow on SharePoint
3. "Taxonomies are dead. Long live meta data!"
4. Regulatory-compliance concerns reignited
5. Renewed interest in pro-active e-discovery
6. SaaS vendors expand offerings
7. Oracle falls behind in battle for knowledge workers
8. New emphasis on application search
9. Social computing diffuses into the Enterprise
10. Mobile and multimedia web analytics become key requirements, disrupters
11. Long-awaited consolidation comes to the WCM space
12. Buyers remain in driver’s seat
CMS Watch principal, Theresa Regli, adds, “The last two predictions are somewhat related – we’re counseling buyers to negotiate aggressively, and some vendors will endure eroding cash flows better than others.”
What do you think? Post your comment below.
2009 will bring significant changes to content technology marketplaces, according to independent technology evaluation company, CMS Watch (www.cmswatch.com).
“Obviously the economic slump will continue to influence buyers and vendors,” observes CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne, “but other technology developments – including the rise of mobile analytics and a new version of MS SharePoint – will also significantly affect enterprise calculations.”
CMS Watch offers twelve predictions:
1. Open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) players get an initial boost
2. Office14 casts long shadow on SharePoint
3. "Taxonomies are dead. Long live meta data!"
4. Regulatory-compliance concerns reignited
5. Renewed interest in pro-active e-discovery
6. SaaS vendors expand offerings
7. Oracle falls behind in battle for knowledge workers
8. New emphasis on application search
9. Social computing diffuses into the Enterprise
10. Mobile and multimedia web analytics become key requirements, disrupters
11. Long-awaited consolidation comes to the WCM space
12. Buyers remain in driver’s seat
CMS Watch principal, Theresa Regli, adds, “The last two predictions are somewhat related – we’re counseling buyers to negotiate aggressively, and some vendors will endure eroding cash flows better than others.”
What do you think? Post your comment below.
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