Industry Trends

Ain’t no mountain high enough!  Today, CloudNine is participating in The Master’s Conference 2017 Denver event.  If you’re in the Denver area today, join my colleague Julia Romero Peter and other legal technology experts and professionals at The Master’s Conference event for a full day of educational sessions covering a wide range of topics!

The Master’s Conference brings together leading experts and professionals from law firms, corporations and the bench to develop strategies, practices and resources for managing the information life cycle.  This year’s Denver event – “Rocky Career? Facing Mountains Of Data Challenges?” – covers topics ranging from technology evaluations to forces changing eDiscovery to analytics and social media discovery.  Cybersecurity and data privacy are covered too.

The event will be held at NATIV Hotel, 1612 Wazee St, Denver, CO 80202.  Registration begins at 8am, with sessions starting right after that, at 8:30am.

CloudNine will be sponsoring the session Data, Discovery, and Decisions: Extending Discovery From Collection To Creation at 11:15am.  Julia, our General Counsel and VP of Sales, will be moderating a panel that includes Kelly Twigger, Founder of ESI Attorneys, Michael Burg, Corporate Counsel at Dish Network and Shawn Huston, Managing Partner at LSP Data Solutions LLC.

Their panel discussion will focus on objective of data discovery through Legal Discovery, a framework for approaching discovery, process challenges and technical hurdles and outside the box challenges and solutions.  It should be a very informative discussion with a very knowledgeable panel!  Hope you can join them!

Click here to register for the conference.  It’s a day well spent with sessions all day long, including the keynote at lunch by the Honorable Craig B. Shaffer, U.S. Magistrate Judge in Denver.

This year, The Master’s Conference also has events scheduled for New York City, London(!), Washington DC and Orlando.  Click here for more information on remaining scheduled events for the year.

BTW, if you’re a member of a solo or small law firm or want to learn how to simplify the discovery process, feel free to check this upcoming webcast!

So, what do you think?  Are you in Denver today?  If so, check it out!  And, 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.

For the second year in a row, I’m participating in The Master’s Conference 2017 Chicago event, which happens to be today.  If you’re in the Chicago area today, join me and other legal technology experts and professionals at The Master’s Conference event for a full day of educational sessions covering a wide range of topics!

The Master’s Conference brings together leading experts and professionals from law firms, corporations and the bench to develop strategies, practices and resources for managing the information life cycle.  This year’s Chicago event – “Deep Dish Data with Only Chopsticks to Manage It” – covers topics ranging from technology evaluations to forces changing eDiscovery to analytics and social media discovery.  Cybersecurity and data privacy are covered too.

The event will be held at Wyndham Grand Riverfront, 71 E Upper Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60601.  Registration begins at 8am, with sessions starting right after that, at 8:30am.

CloudNine will be sponsoring the session Data, Discovery, and Decisions: Extending Discovery From Collection To Creation at 1:45pm.  I will be moderating a panel that includes Matt Wolfe, Commercial Litigator with Shook, Hardy & Bacon, L.L.P., Ryan Tilot, Counsel with Seyfarth Shaw LLP and Mykhaylo Bulyk, Cyber Intelligence/Incident Response Manager for CDK Global.

Our panel discussion will discuss how big data is impacting today’s litigation landscape, the use of non-traditional tools and approaches, how more and more organizations are conducting “data discovery” pre-litigation and the impact of big data on cybersecurity.  It should be a very informative discussion with a very knowledgeable panel!  Hope you can join us!

Click here to register for the conference.  It’s a day well spent with sessions all day long, including the keynote at lunch.

This year, The Master’s Conference also has events scheduled for Denver, New York City, London(!), Washington DC and Orlando.  Click here for more information on remaining scheduled events for the year.

So, what do you think?  Are you in Chicago today?  If so, come join us!  And, 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.

The results are in from the Complex Discovery Spring 2017 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey, which has just concluded and (as was the case for the 2016 Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall surveys and the 2017 Winter survey) the results are published on Rob Robinson’s terrific Complex Discovery site.  How confident are individuals working in the eDiscovery ecosystem in the business of eDiscovery?  Let’s see.

As always, Rob provides a complete breakdown of the latest survey results, which you can check out here.  So, to avoid redundancy, I will primarily focus on trends over the past four surveys to see how the responses have varied from quarter to quarter and will take a look at a year over year comparison to the Spring 2016 survey.

The Spring 2017 Survey response period was initiated on April 17, and continued until registration of 100 responses on May 3 (this survey was capped at 104). Rob notes that this limiting of responders to 100 (or so) individuals is designed to create linearity in the number of responses for each quarterly surveySo, in the future, if you want your voice heard, respond early!

Percentage of Provider Respondents Continuing to Rise: Of the types of respondents, 58.6% were either Software and/or Services Provider (44.2%) or Consultancy (14.4%) for over half of respondents as some sort of outsourced provider (over half of total respondents – I’m counting law firm respondents as consumers even though they can also be providers as well).  Law firm respondents comprised a majority of the remaining respondents with 30.8%.  Corporate responders were a distant fourth with 4.8% of respondents; no other type of respondents was over 3%.  Here’s a graphical representation of the trend over the past four quarters:

When comparing this year’s Winter survey to last year’s survey, it is clear that (despite the continued trend toward a rise in percentage of provider respondents), the survey is (barely) still more diverse than it was a year ago, especially with regard to the percentage of law firm respondents:

Just Over Half of Respondents Consider Business to Be Good: Over half (52.9%, to be exact) of respondents rated the current general business conditions for eDiscovery in their segment to be good, with only 6.7% rating business conditions as bad.  Last quarter, those numbers were 49% and 9% respectively, so this quarter reflects more bullish than last quarter, continuing the trend of up and down quarter over quarter.  Will the summer mean another downturn?  We’ll see.  Here is the trend for the last four quarterly surveys:

When comparing against last year’s Winter survey, respondents this Spring aren’t as bullish as they were a year ago (over 60% rated the current general business conditions for eDiscovery in their segment to be good in 2016).  Of course, the survey was smaller and more provider-centric back then (for what it’s worth):

Almost Everyone Still Expects eDiscovery Business Conditions to be as Good or Better Six Months From Now: Almost all respondents (96.2%) expect business conditions will be in their segment to be the same or better six months from now (well above last quarter’s 86%), and the percentage expecting business to be better jumped back up to 47.1%.  Revenue (at combined 93.3% for the same or better) and profit (combined 93.3%) also rose from last quarter (for the first time ever, half of respondents expect higher profits in six months).  Here is the profits trend for the last four quarterly surveys:

When compared against last year’s Winter survey, the distribution for profits six months from now was way more bullish with a 10.5% increase of respondents expecting higher profits and a 2.5% decrease of respondents expecting lower profits:

Increasing Volumes of Data is Still Most Impactful to eDiscovery Business: Increasing Volumes of Data was the top impactful factor to the business of eDiscovery over the next six months at 25%, with Budgetary Constraints next up at 21.2%.  Lack of Personnel was close behind in third with 20.2%, followed by Data Security (16.3%), Increasing Types of Data (10.6%) and Inadequate Technology (at 6.7%) bringing up the rear.  The graph below illustrates the distribution across the most recent four quarterly surveys.

A year ago, Budgetary Constraints was voted as the most impactful to eDiscovery business, but ever since then, Increasing Volumes of Data has been first or tied for first, so it’s a clear consistent impact on eDiscovery business these days:

Executive Leader Respondents Moving Back Up: Last time, the three groups of respondents were fairly balanced.  This time, Executive Leadership respondents rose again (to 44.2%) and was the clear leader, with Operational Management and Tactical Execution splitting the remaining respondents (at 27.9% each).  Here’s the breakdown of the last four quarters:

Nonetheless, the survey is certainly more distributed than last year, where Executive Leadership was a majority of the responses.  It will be interesting to see what the distribution is in the Summer survey.

Again, Rob has published the results on his site here, which shows responses to additional questions not referenced here.  Check it out.

So, what do you think?  What’s your state of confidence in the business of eDiscovery?  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.

Today at noon CST (1:00pm EST, 10:00am PST), CloudNine will conduct the webcast Pitfalls and Potholes to Avoid in Your eDiscovery Projects.  This one hour webcast will discuss some of the most common “pitfalls” and “potholes” that you can encounter during the discovery life cycle from Information Governance to Production and how to address them to keep your discovery project on track.

I’ll be presenting the webcast with Karen DeSouza, Director of Review Services at CloudNine and we will discuss twenty(!) different “pitfalls” and “potholes” that you can avoid to keep your project on track.  Examples of issues being discussed include:

• Avoiding the Mistake in Assuming that Discovery Begins When the Case is Filed
• How to Proactively Address Inadvertent Privilege Productions
• Up Front Planning to Reduce Review Costs
• How to Avoid Getting Stuck with a Bad Production from Opposing Counsel
• Understanding Your Data to Drive Discovery Decisions
• Minimizing Potential ESI Spoliation Opportunities
• Ways to Avoid Potential Data Breaches
• How to Avoid Processing Mistakes that Can Slow You Down
• Common Searching Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Techniques to Increase Review Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Checklist of Items to Ensure a Smooth and Accurate Production

If you’ve ever managed a discovery project for litigation, investigations or audits, you know that “Murphy’s Law” dictates that a number of “pitfalls” and “potholes” can (and will) occur that can derail your project. These issues can add considerable cost to your discovery effort through unexpected rework and also cause you to miss important deadlines or even incur the wrath of a judge for not following accepted rules and principles for discovery.

To register for the webcast, click here.  You may thank us later. :o)  Hope you can attend!

So, what do you think?  Have you encountered “pitfalls” or “potholes” in your discovery projects?  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.