Collection

Thought Leader Q&A: Brad Jenkins of Trial Solutions

 

Tell me about your company and the products you represent. Trial Solutions is an electronic discovery software and services company in Houston, Texas that assists corporations and law firms in the collection, processing and review of electronic data. Trial Solutions developed OnDemand™, formerly known as ImageDepot™, an online e-discovery review application which is currently used by over fifty of the top 250 law firms including seven of the top ten.  Trial Solutions also offers FirstPass™, an early case assessment and first-pass review application.  Both applications are offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), where Trial Solutions licenses the applications to customers for use and provides access via the Internet. Trial Solutions provides litigation support services in over 90 metropolitan areas throughout the United States and Canada.

What do you see as emerging trends for eDiscovery SaaS solutions?  I believe that one emerging trend that you’ll see is simplified pricing.  Pricing for many eDiscovery SaaS solutions is too complex and difficult for clients to understand.  Many providers base pricing on a combination of collection size and number of users (among other factors) which is confusing and penalizes organizations for adding users into a case,  I believe that organizations will expect simpler pricing models from providers with the ability to add an unlimited number of users to each case.

Another trend I expect to see is provision of more self-service capabilities giving legal teams greater control over managing their own databases and cases.  Organizations need the ability to administer their own databases, add users and maintain their rights without having to rely on the hosting provider to provide these services.  A major self-service capability is the ability to load your own data on your schedule without having to pay load fees to the hosting provider.

Why do you think that more eDiscovery SaaS solutions don’t provide a free self loading capability?  I don’t know.  Many SaaS solutions outside of eDiscovery enable you to upload your own data to use and share via the Web.  Facebook and YouTube enable you to upload and share pictures and videos, Google Docs is designed for sharing and maintaining business documents, and even SalesForce.com allows you to upload contacts via a comma-separated values (CSV) file.  So, loading your own data is not a new concept for SaaS solutions.  OnDemand™ is about to roll out a new SelfLoader™ module to enable clients to load their own data, for free.  With SelfLoader, clients can load their own images, OCR text files, native files and metadata to an existing OnDemand database using an industry-standard load file (IPRO’s .lfp or Concordance’s .opt) format.

Are there any other trends that you see in the industry?  One clear trend is the rising popularity in first pass review/early case assessment (or, early data assessment, as some prefer) solutions like FirstPass as corporate data proliferates at an amazing pace.  According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the amount of digital information created, captured and replicated in the world as of 2006 was 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes and that is expected to rise more than six-fold by 2010 (to 988 exabytes)!  That’s enough data for a stack of books from the sun to Pluto and back again!  With more data than ever to review, attorneys will have to turn to applications to enable them to quickly cull the data to a manageable level for review – it will simply be impossible to review the entire collection in a cost-efficient and timely manner.  It will also be important for there to be a seamless transition from first pass review for culling collections to attorney linear review for final determination of relevancy and privilege and Trial Solutions provides a fully integrated approach with FirstPass and OnDemand.

About Brad Jenkins
Brad Jenkins, President and CEO of Trial Solutions, has over 20 years of experience leading customer focused companies in the litigation support arena. Brad has authored many articles on litigation support issues, and has spoken before national audiences on document management practices and solutions.

Thought Leader Q&A: Alon Israely of BIA

 

Tell me about your company and the products you represent.  BIA is a full solution E-Discovery provider. Our core competencies are around E-Discovery Collections and Processing, but we offer the full spectrum of services around E-Discovery.   For almost a decade, BIA has been developing and implementing defensible, technology driven solutions that reduce the costs and risks related to litigation, regulatory compliance and internal audits.  BIA provides software and services to Fortune 1000, Global 2000 companies and Am Law 100 law firms. We are headquartered in New York City, and have offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC and in Southwest Michigan. We also maintain digital evidence response units throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

BIA’s products are defensible and cost effective, offering defensible remote collections with DiscoveryBOT™, fast e-discovery processing with our TD Grid system and automated and secure legal hold software with Solis™.  For more about BIA’s product, click here.

What is the best way for lawyers and litigation support professionals to take control of their eDiscovery?  The best way for litigation support professionals to take control of their e-discovery is to scope projects correctly.  It is important to understand that not one size fits all in e-discovery.  That is, there are many tools and service providers out there – it is important to focus (at the beginning) on what needs to be accomplished from a legal and IT perspective first and then to determine which technologies and methods fit that strategy best. 

What is a good way to achieve predictability in eDiscovery costs?  Most of the cost analysis that exists in e-discovery today is focused on the Review side, where the data has already been collected and perhaps culled. Yet, there are still too many documents, where most of the documents are not responsive. With a focus on the left side of the EDRM, e-discovery costs are visible early on in the process.  For example, using a good (light-touch) collection tool and method to lock data down is one of the best ways to control e-discovery costs – that is, doing the right collection early-on and getting the right metrics from those collections, allow you to analyze that data (even at a high-level without incurring processing and other costs) which can then help can help the attorneys and the institutional client determine costs early in the process, and in a more predictable manner.

Is there a way to perform self collection in a defensible manner?  Yes.  Use the right tools and methods and importantly, have those tools and methods vetted (reviewed and approved) by e-discovery collection professionals.  Defensible self-collections do NOT mean that the custodian or the IT people are left to perform the collection on their own without the right plan behind them.  There are best-practices that should be followed and there are some tools that maintain the integrity of the data.  Make sure that those best practices and tools are used (having been scoped correctly – see response above) by professionals or at least used by staff and peer-reviewed or monitored by professionals.  Also, rely on custodians for good ESI identification – that is, the custodians (users) usually know better than anyone where they maintain records – so, using custodian questionnaires early-on will help inform those systems which will be most relevant – which goes to diligence (an important factor in defensible collections).  Also then the professional can work in tandem with the custodian to gather the data in a manner which will ensure the evidentiary integrity of the data.  At BIA we have been following those methods for years and have been very successful with our clients, the Courts and Opposing parties, at defending those ways of identifying and collecting ESI.

What is the importance of the left side of the EDRM model?  The left side is where it all starts with e-discovery – that is, ESI collections are usually the most affordable parts of the overall e-discovery process and are arguably the most important – that is, “garbage in/garbage-out.”  Because the subsequent parts of the e-discovery process (i.e., the “right-side of the EDRM”) rely on the data identified and gathered in the early parts of the process, it is imperative that those tasks and activities performed for the “left side of EDRM” are done in the correct manner – that is, maintaining the evidentiary integrity of the data collected.  Also, the left side of the EDRM includes preserving data and notifying custodians of their obligations to preserve – which is a piece critical to defensible e-discovery – especially in light of Pension Committee and some other recent cases.  As for the money piece, the left side of the EDRM is an area where much of the planning can occur for the rest of the process without incurring substantial costs – that planning goes a long way to ascertaining the real costs and timing with respect to the remainder of the e-discovery process.

About Alon Israely

Alon Israely has over fifteen years of experience in a variety of advanced computing-related technologies. Alon is a Senior Advisor in BIA’s Advisory Services group and currently oversees BIA’s product development for its core technology products. Prior to BIA, Alon consulted with law firms and their clients on a variety of technology issues, including expert witness services related to computer forensics, digital evidence management and data security. Prior to that, he was a senior member of several IT teams working on projects for Fortune 500 companies related to global network architecture and data migrations projects for enterprise information systems. As a pioneer in the field of digital evidence collection and handling, Alon has worked on a wide variety of matters, including several notable financial fraud cases; large-scale multi-party international lawsuits; and corporate matters involving the SEC, FTC, and international regulatory boards.  Alon holds a B.A. from UCLA and received his J.D. from New York Law School with an emphasis in Telecommunications Law. He is a member of the New York State Bar as well as several legal and computer forensic associations.

Reporting from the EDRM Mid-Year Meeting

 

Launched in May 2005, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was created to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market.  Now, in its sixth year of operation, EDRM has become the gold standard for…well…standards in eDiscovery.  Most references to the eDiscovery industry these days refer to the EDRM model as a representation of the eDiscovery life cycle.

At the first meeting in May 2005, there were 35 attendees, according to Tom Gelbmann of Gelbmann & Associates, co-founder of EDRM along with George Socha of Socha Consulting LLC.  Check out the preliminary first draft of the EDRM diagram – it has evolved a bit!  Most participants were eDiscovery providers and, according to Gelbmann, they asked “Do you really expect us all to work together?”  The answer was “yes”, and the question hasn’t been asked again.  Today, there are over 300 members from 81 participating organizations including eDiscovery providers, law firms and corporations (as well as some individual participants).

This week, the EDRM Mid-Year meeting is taking place in St. Paul, MN.  Twice a year, in May and October, eDiscovery professionals who are EDRM members meet to continue the process of working together on various standards projects.  EDRM has eight currently active projects, as follows:

  • Data Set: provides industry-standard, reference data sets of electronically stored information (ESI) and software files that can be used to test various aspects of eDiscovery software and services,
  • Evergreen: ensures that EDRM remains current, practical and relevant and educates about how to make effective use of the Model,
  • Information Management Reference Model (IMRM): provides a common, practical, flexible framework to help organizations develop and implement effective and actionable information management programs,
  • Jobs: develops a framework for evaluating pre-discovery and discovery personnel needs or issues,
  • Metrics: provides an effective means of measuring the time, money and volumes associated with eDiscovery activities,
  • Model Code of Conduct: evaluates and defines acceptable boundaries of ethical business practices within the eDiscovery service industry,
  • Search: provides a framework for defining and managing various aspects of Search as applied to eDiscovery workflow,
  • XML: provides a standard format for e-discovery data exchange between parties and systems, reducing the time and risk involved with data exchange.

This is my fourth year participating in the EDRM Metrics project and it has been exciting to see several accomplishments made by the group, including creation of a code schema for measuring activities across the EDRM phases, glossary definitions of those codes and tools to track early data assessment, collection and review activities.  Today, we made significant progress in developing survey questions designed to gather and provide typical metrics experienced by eDiscovery legal teams in today’s environment.

So, what do you think?  Has EDRM impacted how you manage eDiscovery?  If so, how?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Project Management: Data Gathering Plan, Schedule Collection

We’ve already covered the first step of the data gathering plan:  preparing a list of data sources of potentially relevant materials and identifying custodians.  Now let’s fill out the plan.  Here’s a step-by-step approach:

  • Determine who will gather the data.  You need an experienced computer expert who has specialized tools that collect data in a way that preserves its integrity and who can testify – if needed – regarding the processes and tools that were used.
  • For each data source on your list, identify where the data is located.  You should interview custodians to find out what computers, storage devices, communications devices and third party service providers they use.
  • For each data source on your list, identify what type of data exists.  You should interview custodians to find out what software programs they use to generate documents and the types of files they receive.  This list will get filled out further as you start looking at data, but getting this information early will give you a good feel for what to expect and will also give you a heads up on what may be required for processing and reviewing data.
  • Next, put together a schedule for the collection effort.  Determine the order in which data will be collected and assign dates to each data source.  Work with your client to build a schedule that causes minimal disruption to business operations.
  • Notify custodians in advance of when you’ll be working with their data and what you’ll need from them.

Once your schedule is in place, you’ll be able to start planning and scheduling subsequent tasks such as processing the data.

In our next eDiscovery Project Management blog, we’ll talk about documented procedures.  We’ll cover why they are important and I’ll give you some tips for preparing effective procedures.

So, what do you think?  What do you include in your data gathering plans?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Project Management: Data Gathering Plan, Identify Data Sources

 

One of the first electronic discovery tasks you’ll do for a case is to collect potentially responsive electronic documents from your client.  Before you start that collection effort, you should prepare a data-gathering plan to ensure that you are covering all the bases.  That plan should identify the locations from which data will be collected, who will collect the data, and a schedule for the collection effort.

Learn about Your Client

First, you need information from your client that is aimed at identifying all the possible locations and custodians of responsive data.  Some of this information may be available in written form, and some is best gleaned by interviewing client employees.   

Start by looking at:

  • Organization charts to identify potential custodians.
  • Organization charts for the IT and Records Management departments so you’ll know what individuals have knowledge of the technology that is used and how and where data is stored.
  • Written policies on computer use, back-ups, record-retention, disaster recovery, and so on.

To identify all locations of potentially relevant data, interview client employees to find out about:

  • The computer systems that are used, including hardware, software, operating systems and email programs.
  • Central databases and central electronic filing systems.
  • Devices and secondary computers that are used by employees.
  • Methods that employees use for communicating including cell phones, instant messaging, and social networking.
  • Legacy programs and how and where legacy data is stored.
  • What happens to the email and documents of employees that have left the organization.
  • Third party providers that store company information.

Once you’ve done your homework and learned what you can from your client, compile a list of data sources of potentially relevant materials.  To compile that list, you should get input from:

  • Attorneys who are familiar with the issues in the case and the rules of civil procedure.
  • Technical staff who understand how data is accessed and how and where data is stored
  • Records management staff who are familiar with the organization’s record retention policies
  • Client representatives who are experts in the subject matter of the litigation and familiar with the operations and business units at issue. 

Once you’ve got your list of data sources, you’re ready to put together the data-gathering plan. 

So, what do you think?  Do you routinely prepare a data-gathering plan?  Have you had problems when you didn’t?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Announcing eDiscovery Thought Leader Q&A Series!

 

eDiscovery Daily is excited to announce a new blog series of Q&A interviews with various eDiscovery thought leaders.  Over the next three weeks, we will publish interviews conducted with six individuals with unique and informative perspectives on various eDiscovery topics.  Mark your calendars for these industry experts!

Christine Musil is Director of Marketing for Informative Graphics Corporation, a viewing, annotation and content management software company based in Arizona.  Christine will be discussing issues associated with native redaction and redaction of Adobe PDF files.  Her interview will be published this Thursday, October 14.

Jim McGann is Vice President of Information Discovery for Index Engines. Jim has extensive experience with the eDiscovery and Information Management.  Jim will be discussing issues associated with tape backup and retrieval.  His interview will be published this Friday, October 15.

Alon Israely is a Senior Advisor in BIA’s Advisory Services group and currently oversees BIA’s product development for its core technology products.  Alon will be discussing best practices associated with “left side of the EDRM model” processes such as preservation and collection.  His interview will be published next Thursday, October 21.

Chris Jurkiewicz is Co-Founder of Venio Systems, which provides Venio FPR™ allowing legal teams to analyze data, provide an early case assessment and a first pass review of any size data set.  Chris will be discussing current trends associated with early case assessment and first pass review tools.  His interview will be published next Friday, October 22.

Kirke Snyder is Owner of Legal Information Consultants, a consulting firm specializing in eDiscovery Process Audits to help organizations lower the risk and cost of e-discovery.  Kirke will be discussing best practices associated with records and information management.  His interview will be published on Monday, October 25.

Brad Jenkins is President and CEO for Trial Solutions, which is an electronic discovery software and services company that assists litigators in the collection, processing and review of electronic information.  Brad will be discussing trends associated with SaaS eDiscovery solutions.  His interview will be published on Tuesday, October 26.

We thank all of our guests for participating!

So, what do you think?  Is there someone you would like to see interviewed for the blog?  Are you an industry expert with some information to share from your “soapbox”?  If so, please share any comments or contact me at daustin@trialsolutions.net.  We’re looking to assemble our next group of interviews now!

eDiscovery Best Practices: Cost of Data Storage is Declining – Or Is It?

Recently, I was gathering information on the cost of data storage and ran across this ad from the early 1980s for a 10 MB disk drive – for $3,398! That’s MB (megabytes), not GB (gigabytes) or TB (terabytes). What a deal!

Even in 2000, storage costs were around $20 per GB, so an 8 GB drive would cost about $160.

Today, 1 TB is available for $100 or less. HP has a 2 TB external drive available at Best Buy for $140 (prices subject to change of course). That’s 7 cents per GB. Network storage drives are more expensive, but still available for around $100 per TB.

At these prices, it’s natural for online, accessible data in corporations to rise exponentially. It’s great to have more and more data readily available to you, until you are hit with litigation or regulatory requests. Then, you potentially have to go through all that data for discovery to determine what to preserve, collect, process, analyze, review and produce.

Here is what each additional GB can cost to review (based on typical industry averages):

  • 1 GB = 20,000 documents (can vary widely, depending on file formats)
  • Review attorneys typically average 60 documents reviewed per hour (for simple relevancy determinations)
  • That equals an average of 333 review hours per GB (20,000 / 60)
  • If you’re using contract reviewers at $50 per hour – each extra GB just cost you $16,650 to review (333×50)

That’s expensive storage! And, that doesn’t even take into consideration the costs to identify, preserve, collect, and process each additional GB.

Managing Storage Costs Effectively

One way to manage those costs is to limit the data retained in the first place through an effective records management program that calls for regular destruction of data not subject to a litigation hold. If you’re eliminating expired data on a regular basis, there is less data to go through the EDRM discovery “funnel” to production.

Sophisticated collection tools or first pass review tools (like FirstPass™, powered by Venio FPR™) can also help cull data for attorney review to reduce those costs, which is the most expensive component of eDiscovery.

So, what do you think? Do you track GB metrics for your eDiscovery cases? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Social Tech eDiscovery: Twitter Guidelines for Law Enforcement

Tuesday, I provided information regarding Facebook’s Law Enforcement page with information about serving civil subpoenas. Facebook provides quite a bit of useful information regarding serving subpoenas, including the address for registered agent (to process requests), information required to identify users, fee for processing, turnaround time, and fee to expedite responses. Facebook is very informative with regard to how subpoenas are handled in terms of cost and time to process.

So, it makes sense to look at other popular social media sites to see how they are handling this issue. Twitter is probably right behind Facebook in terms of popularity in the social media world and they have a “Guidelines for Law Enforcement” page to address requests for non-public information for Twitter users.

As the Twitter policy notes, most Twitter profile information is public, so anyone can see it. A Twitter profile contains a profile image, background image, as well as the status updates, which, of course, they call “tweets”. In addition, the user has the option to fill out location, a URL, and a short “bio” section about themselves for display on their public profile. Non-public information includes “log data” such as IP address, browser type, the referring domain, pages visited, search terms and interactions with advertisements (as noted in their Privacy Policy page).

Twitter doesn’t provide any cost information regarding processing subpoena requests, nor do they address standard turnaround times or fees to expedite processing. Their policy is to notify users of requests for their information prior to disclosure unless they are prohibited from doing so by statute or court order and they do require the URL of the Twitter profile in question to process any subpoena requests. They do provide email, fax and physical address contact information to address user information requests. FYI, only email from law enforcement domains will be accepted via the email address. Preservation requests must be signed with a valid return email address, and sent on law enforcement letterhead. Non-law enforcement requests should be sent through regular support methods (via their main support page).

So, what do you think? Have you ever needed to file a subpoena on Twitter? Please share, or let us know or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Social Tech eDiscovery: Facebook Subpoena Policy

As President and CEO of Trial Solutions, I’ve noted and embraced the explosion in use of social technology over the past few years (Trial Solutions has a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn page, and this blog, with more to come soon). According to new statistics from Nielsen, social network sites now account for 22.7% of time spent on the web, a 43% jump in one year (by contrast, email only accounts for 8.3%). With that explosion in social tech use, companies have had to address social media as another form of media to collect for eDiscovery. It seems there’s a new article or blog post online every week on the subject and there is a social media webinar at Virtual Legal Tech this Thursday.

As probably the most popular social media site, Facebook is one of the most likely sites for relevant ESI. There are already a number of stories online about people who have lost their jobs due to Facebook postings, such as these. There is even a Facebook group to post stories about Facebook firings. Oh, the irony!

Naturally, cases related to Facebook eDiscovery issues have become more prevalent. One case, EEOC v. Simply Storage Management, resulted in a May ruling that “SNS (social networking site) content is not shielded from discovery simply because it is ‘locked’ or ‘private’”. So, request away!

If the employee resists or no longer has access to responsive content (or you need to request from their online friends through “Wall” posts), you may have to request content directly from Facebook through a subpoena. Facebook has a Law Enforcement page with information about serving civil subpoenas, including:

  • Address for Registered Agent (to process requests)
  • Information Required to Identify Users – Facebook user ID (“UID”) or email address
  • Fee for Processing ($500, plus an additional $100 if you want a notarized declaration)
  • Turnaround Time (minimum of 30 days)
  • Fee to Expedite Responses ($200)

Obviously, fees are subject to change, so check the page for the latest before serving your subpoena.

So, what do you think? Have you ever needed to file a subpoena on Facebook? Aware of other case law related to Facebook eDiscovery? Please share, or let us know or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.