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Electronic Discovery

The Cowen Group 2016 eDiscovery and Litigation Support Salary Report: eDiscovery Trends

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the Robert Half 2017 Legal Salary Guide with a specific focus on litigation support and eDiscovery salaries.  This week, we’re covering results from the Tenth Annual Salary Survey from The Cowen Group.  Let’s take a look at this latest opportunity to push for that raise you’ve been wanting.

This year, there were 244 responses received from law firms (36% Large Law respondents, 22% Mid-Law), service providers (19%), corporations (19%) and government (4%), with over 50 organizations providing compensation information for their eDiscovery teams to bolster and corroborate data received from individual survey respondents.  Here are a few other noteworthy findings from the 15 page report.

  • New Positions: The Cowen Group predicted that approximately 245 new positions will be created in 2017, with the strongest growth and demand taking place in the vendor/service provider sector with particular emphasis being placed on technical professionals (60 new hires) and project managers (86), as well as growth positions such as data scientists (6), forensic professionals (20) and customer/client success experts (7).
  • Median Salaries Largely Flat: As was the case in the past two annual reports, median salaries remained relatively flat, with only a 0-2% median increase over last year’s numbers. The Cowen Group attributed the flattening of median salaries to several factors, including increased reporting from mid-law firms, growing hiring trends for eDiscovery positions in both mid-sized organizations and middle-market geographic locations, and differentiation in base salaries between law firm, corporate, and vendor market segments. One notable exception with regard to flat salaries was the eDiscovery attorney group, who reported a 16% median increase over base salaries from the previous year.
  • Bonuses Up: As compared to base salaries, annual bonuses appear to be increasing steadily across the board and average bonuses amounted to higher percentages of base salaries this year, especially for Manager (approximately $10,080 as compared to $7,660 in last year’s report), Director, (approximately $16,100 as compared to $9,890) and Attorney roles (approximately $29,830 as compared to $12,809).
  • eDiscovery Professionals are Certifiable: The Certified eDiscovery Specialists (“CEDS”) remained the most commonly held certifications across all titles and roles. The Relativity Certified Administrator (“RCA”) and LexisNexis LAW Prediscovery (“LAW”) were the most widely held technical certification across several positions as well, with RCA providing a slightly positive influence on salary in the analyst and project manager roles.

The report also provides the minimum and maximum reported salary for each primary position for this year, as well as the mean, median, low (25%) and high (75%).  Median salaries were charted for each position from 2008 through 2016.  It also reports on geographical and organizational trends and provides a data sheet for each of the five primary positions, with skills for success and top certifications.

This 15 page guide is also FREE and is available here.  Check it out.  Maybe you need a raise?

So, what do you think?  Do the numbers surprise you?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

This is a Non-Political Post: eDiscovery Trends

At the outset, I feel that I should state that, given that this post is about the Hilary Clinton emails and the FBI handling of them.

In his latest post (E-Discovery Lessons from the Huma Abedin E-Mails), Craig Ball takes a look at the eDiscovery implications regarding the handling of the Huma Abedin emails and his distaste for FBI Director James Comey’s handling of them.  Craig states: “‘Reckless’ doesn’t begin to describe Comey’s self-indulgent decision to release information about a situation he clearly does not yet grasp, in a manner that elevates Jim Comey above longstanding Justice Department policy and the integrity of a Presidential election.”

Nonetheless, regardless of political leanings, Craig notes that his post “will not be a political screed, so while I always welcome critical and substantive comments on anything I write, please hew to the e-discovery aspects of same.  Please.”  Of course, at least one commenter (so far) still questioned the political intent of his post, characterizing Craig’s comments as “partisan”.  Not surprisingly, there were already 20 total comments on Craig’s post in less than a full day (including mine).

Craig’s post, and the comments back and forth are well worth reading.  One of the eDiscovery discussion points related to the cross-collection correlation of email messages – which Craig wrote about here and we covered here, with back and forth discussion between Craig and our CTO, Bill David – and the challenge of doing that when the Clinton emails were produced to the State Department in paper (yes, paper) format.  There was also a discussion as to whether the Clinton claim that “more than 90% of those emails should have already been captured in the State Department’s email system” was true and could have eliminated most of the email matching effort to determine whether there is significant new information in the Abedin emails that bear investigating.

And, to think this latest round was initiated because of our social media gone wrong poster child, Anthony Weiner.  Some people never learn to think before they hit send.

Bill Dimm provided a link to Hilary Clinton’s fact sheet regarding the emails in one of his comments, which answered the question as to why Clinton produced printed copies to the State Department instead of ESI, noting that the Foreign Affairs Manual of the State Department provides this guidance with regard to how to preserve e-mail records:

“Until technology allowing archival capabilities for long-term electronic storage and retrieval of E-mail messages is available and installed, those messages warranting preservation as records (for periods longer than current E-mail systems routinely maintain them) must be printed out and filed with related records.”  [5 FAM 443.3].

So, our government is just as behind as the rest of the legal profession (if not more) with regard to production formats.  Big surprise.

We’ve already discussed one area where eDiscovery might impact the coming election.  Maybe this is another.

So, what do you think?  Are you sick of hearing about the election yet?  Me too!  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Don’t Be Afraid, It’s Only – eDiscovery Horrors!

Today is Halloween!  For the seventh year on this blog, it’s time to try to “scare” you with tales of eDiscovery (and now, cybersecurity) horrors (because, after all, we’re an eDiscovery blog).  Let’s see how we do this year.  Are you afraid?

Just when you thought you knew everything about Shakespeare, it turns out he may have had a co-writer.  You can thank big data analytics for that bit of knowledge.

What about this?

Speaking of Shakespeare, you won’t be able to retrieve one of his most famous phrases in most eDiscovery databases.  Here’s why.

Or this?

This plaintiff was sanctioned in July 2015 for failing to preserve text messages for four key custodians, but the sanction was vacated in January of this year.  What changed?

How about this?

Apparently, it appears that the parties (one of whom may someday be an appellant) appreciated the thought that appending a wildcard after “app” would be an appropriate application of the wildcard in that approach (but doing so might retrieve as many as 300 non-responsive search terms).

Or maybe this?

The most famous judge advocating the use of technology assisted review (TAR) has refused to order the defendant to use TAR in this case.  What the hell is going on out here?

Have you considered this?

This defendant received “punitive sanctions in the amount of $3,000,000” for the “intentional and admitted deletion of emails” by the defendant’s Senior Vice President of Sales.  Ouch!

Finally, how about this?

Imagine having 2.6 terabytes of data (comprised of 11.5 million documents) stolen from right under your nose, exposing possible illicit offshore holdings of global political leaders and celebrities with which your firm was involved.  If you’re at that firm, it makes you want to jump in the nearest canal!

Scary, huh?  If the possibility of multi-million dollar sanctions, humongous data breaches or reviewing a lot of non-responsive documents because of bad searches scares you, then the folks at eDiscovery Daily will do our best to provide useful information and best practices to enable you to relax and sleep soundly, even on Halloween!

Of course, if you seriously want to get into the spirit of Halloween, click here.  This will really terrify you!

What do you think?  Is there a particular eDiscovery issue that scares you?  Please share your comments and let us know if you’d like more information on a particular topic.

Happy Halloween!

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Florida Judges Say State Needs More eDiscovery Mediators: eDiscovery Trends

You’d think I lived in Florida as much as we’ve covered it lately, both good and not so good.  This story, for the first state to require technology CLE for attorneys, could be true in many other states as well.

In the Daily Business Review article Judges Zero In on E-Discovery as Promising Niche for Neutrals, written by Samantha Joseph (subscription required, but it’s free), a panel of state judges said there’s a big untapped opportunity for neutrals to specialize in electronic discovery.

Over 3,300 certified circuit court mediators practice in Florida, according to data from the state Supreme Court. But few specialize in eDiscovery, which was the focus of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure last year as courts mapped out litigants’ obligations to preserve electronically stored information (ESI).

“This would be a very good area for our mediators to become educated on,” said Palm Beach Circuit Judge Lisa Small.

Small joined Magistrate Judge Sarah Willis and Circuit Judges Meenu Sasser, Daliah Weiss and Jessica Ticktin (all with the 15th Judicial Circuit of Florida) for a panel discussion Friday, moderated by David Steinfeld, Palm Beach Gardens attorney and founder of Everything e-Discovery LLC.

“Every single case is an e-discovery case now,” Sasser said. “That’s how we live our lives. Everyone is communicating through Facebook, emails, texts.”

Sasser, a finalist for a vacancy in the Fourth District Court of Appeal and the first sitting state court judge in Florida to implement a standing order on ESI, created a meet-and-confer obligation among litigants “to discuss in detail” their clients’ computer systems, software and other factors that could impact eDiscovery, delay cases and add thousands to court costs.  Sasser said administrative judges across the state contacted her to discuss the order, with plans to implement similar policies.

The judges on the panel all agreed on the idea of appointing a special magistrate to handle detailed, complex and time-consuming ESI issues, much like at the height of the housing crisis when some magistrates focused solely on foreclosures to help clear crowded dockets.  The judges said skilled neutrals would help them manage uniform calendar work – about 80-90 percent of which include discovery disputes, primarily involving electronic files and would potentially save litigants in complex litigation thousands of dollars.

So, if you’re a certified court mediator in Florida looking for an opportunity for more work, eDiscovery education could be the ticket.  Now you know on what you can spend (at least) those three required hours of technology CLE!

So, what do you think?  Does your state need more experienced eDiscovery mediators?  Maybe you could change your history!  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Defendant’s Motion to Overrule Plaintiff’s Objections to Discovery Requests

Plaintiff Must Cooperate on Search Terms, Says Court: eDiscovery Case Law

In Pyle v. Selective Insurance Company of America, No. 2:16-cv-335 (W.D. Pa. Sept. 30, 2016), Pennsylvania Senior District Judge Terrence F. McVerry granted the defendant’s Motion to Compel Plaintiff to Provide ESI Search Terms “insofar as it seeks to compel Plaintiff to confer and come to an agreement on the search terms Defendant will use to cull through the additional email archives that Defendant has identified as having been retrieved.”

Case Background

In this case, plaintiff’s counsel served the defendant with a Request for Production of Documents in July 2016, which sought “all emails, correspondence, memorandum, and/or other documents” from various defendant employees relating to the plaintiff’s employment, particularly her receipt of disability benefits and the termination of her employment. The defendant responded by providing some relevant documents and also advised Plaintiff that “[i]n addition to the documents produced, additional email archives for various Selective employees have been retrieved”,  requesting that “Plaintiff agree with Defendant on appropriate electronic search terms to be used to located [sic] any relevant documents therein.”  After plaintiff’s counsel refused, defendant’s counsel e-mailed plaintiff’s counsel again in early September asking for a “suggested list of search terms . . . so that we can agree on a common set of terms so that the electronic records [Selective] has gathered can be searched for relevance.”  Plaintiff’s counsel responded by saying that the requests “are not requests for access to the email accounts of the individuals referenced in these requests that would necessitate our providing search terms and/or a protocol for the review of these accounts.”

Not satisfied with that response, the defendant filed a motion seeking an order compelling the plaintiff to provide ESI search terms or else relieving Defendant of the obligation to produce any ESI.  The plaintiff objected, arguing that the defendant cited no authority to support its request, nor identified any burden that it faces in locating and producing the requested emails.

Judge’s Ruling

In response to the plaintiff’s argument, Judge McVerry’s stated:

“Plaintiff’s argument totally misses the mark; in fact, it borders on being incomprehensible. Far from being baseless, Defendant’s request is entirely consistent with both the letter and spirit of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding the discovery of electronically stored information and this Court’s Local Rules. It is well settled by now that ‘electronic discovery should be a party-driven process.’…The Federal Rules expressly require counsel to meet and confer on ‘any issues about disclosure, discovery, or preservation of electronically stored information, including the form or forms in which it should be produced[.]’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f)(3)(C). ‘Among the items about which the court expects counsel to `reach practical agreement’ without the court having to micro-manage e-discovery are `search terms, date ranges, key players and the like.’’…Indeed, this principle is incorporated into this Court’s Local Rules, which direct counsel to ‘meet and confer, and attempt to agree, on the discovery of ESI, including . . . an ESI search protocol, including methods to filter data, such as application of search terms or date ranges.’”

As a result, Judge McVerry granted the defendant’s motion “insofar as it seeks to compel Plaintiff to confer and come to an agreement on the search terms Defendant will use to cull through the additional email archives that Defendant has identified as having been retrieved.”  Judge McVerry denied the defendant’s Motion to Compel Production of Medical Records and Executed HIPAA Authorizations as “premature” since the 30 day time period for the plaintiff to respond had not yet elapsed.

So, what do you think?  Should receiving parties be required to negotiate search terms with producing parties?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

What Can Big Data Analytics Do? Rewrite History: eDiscovery Trends

One amusing plotline in the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love (a terrific movie even though, IMHO, it shouldn’t have beaten out Saving Private Ryan for best picture that year – just sayin’) was the rivalry between young Will Shakespeare and fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe.  Shakespeare has become world renowned for centuries, while Marlowe has become largely forgotten (at least by the general public).  But now, Marlowe is being credited as a co-author in all three “Henry VI” plays (Parts 1, 2 and 3).  Says who?  Big Data Analytics.

In the Washington Post article Big debate about Shakespeare finally settled by big data: Marlowe gets his due by Travis M. Andrews, the author reports that, for the first time and with a bit of help from computers and big data, the Oxford University Press will add Marlowe as a co-author in all three “Henry VI” plays.

Though the two were rivals, scholars have long thought Shakespeare might have collaborated with Marlowe, among other contemporary writers as playwriting back then was “structured much the way scriptwriting is today — an author received an advance to write an outline, then the theater that owned the outline would hire different writers to fill in different parts, depending on what they wrote well.”

To find out if collaboration occurred, 23 international scholars performed text analysis by scanning through Marlowe’s (and other contemporary writers’) works, creating computerized data sets of the words and phrases he would repeat, along with how he did so — all of the idiosyncrasies that comprise one’s writing. Once they had a solid sample set of unique patterns, the New York Times reported, they cross-referenced it with Shakespeare’s plays.

The result? Seventeen of 44 of Shakespeare’s works probably had some sort of input from others. The three “Henry VI” plays proved to have enough of Marlowe’s literary footprint that his name deserved to be added as a co-author, Gary Taylor, a professor at Florida State University and one of the editors who led the research contended.

“We have been able to verify Marlowe’s presence in those three plays strongly and clearly enough,” Taylor told the Guardian. “We can now be confident that they didn’t just influence each other, but they worked with each other. Rivals sometimes collaborate.”

Of course, not everybody agreed with that assessment – one scholar suggested Shakespeare might have worked with the actors who were close to Marlowe and picked up his tendencies that way.

Regardless, it is certainly one interesting example of what big data analytics can do.  If only Marlowe’s attorney had that information a few centuries ago – he could have had a heck of an IP infringement case!  :o)

So, what do you think?  Do you see possibilities for big data analytics in your organization?  Maybe you could change your history!  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

A New Partnership to Span Data and Legal Discovery: eDiscovery Trends

 

We usually preface any mention of our parent company CloudNine with a “shameless plug warning” note.  So, consider yourself warned.  However, our latest announcement – an exciting new partnership – bears mention here in this blog.  Oh, and there’s a webinar you should check out too.  :o)

Today, CloudNine is announcing a partnership with Heureka Software, a preeminent provider of technology that gathers and analyzes unstructured data. Our partnership will provide legal, business, and information technology professionals an integrated solution that combines data discovery and legal discovery to harvest data insight to provide actionable legal intelligence.

Remember last week when we discussed a framework for discovery automation that includes data discovery and legal discovery?  Our partnership with Heureka embraces that framework.

Our partnership provides users with Simplified Discovery Automation that gives information, business, and legal professionals an integrated solution that automates eight core tasks that help organizations translate data discovery into insight, and insight into legal intelligence.  Combined, the Heureka Intelligence Platform and the CloudNine eDiscovery Platform provide customers with a complete capability to discover data from the point of creation to defensible disposition.

Here is a link to our press release with more information.

Also, Heureka Founder & Chairman of the Board Ron Copfer and I will be presenting an ACEDS webinar titled Simplified eDiscovery Automation: From Evolution to Revolution next Thursday, November 3rd at 1pm ET.

Our webinar presentation will provide an overview of the evolution of electronic discovery technologies and share ways that you can consider and compare technology offerings from the large ecosystem of providers supporting litigation, investigations, and audits. It will also include an overview of the attributes of fourth generation eDiscovery automation technology as well as a short demonstration of two of those offerings: the Heureka and CloudNine platforms (and we’ll show you how to get a free trial during the presentation!).

Hope to see you there! (Recorded Version Available for On Demand Review)

So, what do you think?  Do you think of discovery as just related to litigation?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Court Denies Defendant’s Motion to Overrule Plaintiff’s Objections to Discovery Requests

Searching Only File Names is Not the “Safe Way” to Avoid Sanctions: eDiscovery Case Law

See what I did there?… :o)

In Rodman v. Safeway, No. 11-cv-03003-JST (N.D. Cal., Oct. 6, 2016), California District Judge Jon S. Tigar ordered the defendant to pay plaintiff’s Class Counsel $688,646 as a discovery sanction under Rule 26(g), ruling that “failure to search within the contents of the legacy drive constituted an unreasonable inquiry”, but denied without prejudice the plaintiff’s request for a negative jury instruction.

Case Background

In this certified class action for breach of contract, the Court previously granted the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment that the defendant breached its contract with class members who registered to shop online after 2006 “by charging higher prices for groceries on its online Safeway.com delivery service than it charged in the stores where the groceries were selected.” After the Court denied the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment regarding pre-2006 liability, only one issue remained to be tried: whether class members who registered for the delivery service prior to 2006 had agreed to the same contract as class members who registered after 2006.

Trial was scheduled to begin on October 6, 2015. Approximately seven days before that date, the defendant produced ten highly relevant documents related to its pre-2006 terms and conditions. The documents were found on a “legacy” computer drive by the defendant’s Director of Marketing, Steve Guthrie, who was reviewing that drive in anticipation for trial. Apparently, Guthrie’s initial search of the legacy drive did not involve a search within the contents of the files, but rather merely searched for file names within the legacy drive. Guthrie did not find the ten documents-in-question until approximately ten days before trial – over five months after fact discovery closed on April 24, 2015. Ultimately, the parties stipulated that the Court’s prior summary judgment orders were equally applicable to Class members who registered before January 1, 2006 and in November 2015, the Court issued a Judgment in favor of the certified class in the amount of $30,979,262 in damages and $10,905,505 in prejudgment interest, for a total of $41,884,767. The defendant appealed.

On April 6, 2016, Plaintiff filed a motion for discovery sanctions under Rule 26(g) based primarily on the defendant’s “false and inaccurate statements” in response to interrogatories and document requests “concerning the non-existences of documents reflecting historic copies of” the defendant’s pre-2006 terms and conditions. The Court held a hearing on the motion on August 25, 2016.

Judge’s Ruling

Judge Tigar disagreed with the defendant that its inquiry was unreasonable, stating “Although there is no indication of bad faith in Safeway’s inability to find the ten responsive documents during fact discovery, the Court concludes that Safeway’s initial search of the legacy drive was unreasonable”, giving three reasons that the inquiry was unreasonable:

  1. There was “no indication that Safeway’s counsel guided or monitored Mr. Guthrie’s search of the legacy drive in any significant way”;
  2. There was no evidence that Guthrie had any experience searching large repositories; and
  3. The evidence indicated that the search was objectively unreasonable.

Ultimately, Judge Tigar concluded that the defendant’s failure to search within the contents of the legacy drive constituted an unreasonable inquiry and that the defendant offered no substantial justification for its violation of Rule 26(g). The plaintiff requested attorneys’ fees totaling over $1 million, but Judge Tigar reduced that request by one-third, resulting in a fee award of $688,646. Judge Tigar also denied without prejudice the plaintiff’s request for a negative jury instruction, but indicated that the plaintiff may renew the request for a negative jury instruction should the Ninth Circuit remand this case for trial.

So, what do you think? Should the lack of finding of bad faith have resulted in a different outcome? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

A Half Salary Guide is a Whole Salary Guide: eDiscovery Trends

When it’s from Robert Half.

Robert Half’s 2017 Legal Salary Guide (downloadable from here) once again features salary ranges for more than 100 positions in the legal field and provides some other interesting statistics, as well. Here are a few highlights.

  • Incentive for Retention: In a survey of 200 lawyers among the largest law firms and corporations in the US, when asked which of the following provides the best incentive for legal professionals to remain with a law firm or company (aside from compensation or bonus), 34 percent of respondents said “Challenging work or variety of assignments”, 26 percent said “Flexible work arrangements” and 20 percent said “Professional development opportunities”. “Good corporate culture/work atmosphere” was a distant fourth at 6 percent.
  • Practice Areas with Greatest Job Opportunities: When asked which of the following practice areas will offer the greatest number of job opportunities at your law firm or company in the next two years, 36 percent of the same respondent group said Litigation, followed by General business/commercial law at 25 percent. No other group had more than 8 percent. Interestingly enough, the same question posed to 150 lawyers among the largest law firms and companies in Canada resulted in a flip-flop of those two practice areas with 36 percent choosing General business/corporate law and 31 percent choosing Litigation. Maybe it’s because Americans are more litigious?
  • Litigation Support/eDiscovery Salaries: Starting salaries for litigation support/eDiscovery directors and managers are expected to increase from 7.8 to 8.9 percent annually from 2016! The top end of the salary range for litigation support/eDiscovery directors with 10+ years of experience is $141,500. Document coders also see an increase – 4.6 percent over 2016.

The guide also provides salary expectations for lawyers, paralegals, office managers, legal secretaries, legal specialists and contract and compliance administration positions for both law firms and corporate legal. Once again, they’re all up (big surprise!).

The survey guide also provides an adjustment for various US cities across the country (obviously, salaries are much higher in New York City (140.5 percent of the reported numbers for the different positions) than in El Paso, TX (72 percent). For example, the top end of the salary range for litigation support/eDiscovery directors with 10+ years of experience in Houston (107 percent for my hometown) is actually $151,405 (are you reading this, boss?). So, you can adjust the numbers based on local variances.

So, what do you think? Do the numbers surprise you? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Once again, it’s a FREE 36 page PDF guide which can be downloaded here. Check it out. Maybe you need a raise?

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

A Framework for Discovery Automation: eDiscovery Trends

Automation has been a recurring theme this year on this blog. At the beginning of the year, I declared that the age of eDiscovery automation is upon us. I’ve also spoken about discovery automation on numerous occasions, including here, here, here, here and here (just two days ago!). Now, a recent post on the Complex Discovery blog takes an interesting look at a framework for discovery automation.

The post A Concise Framework for Discovery Automation notes that “[o]ne of the biggest challenges facing information, business, and legal professionals is the ability to cohesively consider the elements of data discovery and legal discovery within a technology framework that is comprehensive enough to address critical discovery tasks throughout information and legal lifecycles yet concise enough to be realistically approached from an automation perspective.” It illustrates how daunting the challenge can be by looking at the results of the Information Governance Initiative’s Annual Survey for 2015-16 to see how many types of discovery dependent products are considered as part of the information governance technology ecosystem – 22 technologies in all, from records and information management to compliance to data science.

One of the most interesting things about the post is the differentiation between Legal Discovery (a.k.a. Electronic Discovery, which is defined as “the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, processing, searching, reviewing and producing electronically stored information that may be relevant to a civil, criminal, or regulatory matter”) and Data Discovery (which is defined as “the exploration of patterns and trends within unstructured data with the objective of uncovering insight and driving action”). As the diagram above illustrates, there are (not just one, but) two types of discovery, each with its own set of processes and tasks.

I’ve been increasingly interested in efforts to manage information prior to commencement of the legal process and the term “Data Discovery” seems very appropriate to reference those activities.

Another interesting thought about the framework is the idea of a fifth generation of eDiscovery offerings. Just when you got used to four generations, there’s a fifth! As Rob notes, the “characteristics of a fifth generation eDiscovery offering would be the adaptation of current data discovery offerings for use with offerings that were designed for eDiscovery, designed for eDiscovery task integration, and designed for eDiscovery task automation”.

Great article, and it saves me having to do a lot of writing on a travel day back from DC and The Masters Conference (with a bad cold, to boot). Thanks, Rob!

So, what do you think? Do you think of discovery as just related to litigation? As always, please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.