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eDiscovery Daily Is Thirty! (Months Old, That Is)

Thirty months ago yesterday, eDiscovery Daily was launched.  It’s hard to believe that it has been 2 1/2 years since our first three posts that debuted on our first day.  635 posts later, a lot has happened in the industry that we’ve covered.  And, yes we’re still crazy after all these years for committing to a daily post each business day, but we still haven’t missed a business day yet.  Twice a year, we like to take a look back at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are just a few of the posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

In addition, Jane Gennarelli has been publishing an excellent series to introduce new eDiscovery professionals to the litigation process and litigation terminology.  Here is the latest post, which includes links to the previous twenty one posts.

Thanks for noticing us!  We’ve nearly quadrupled our readership since the first six month period and almost septupled (that’s grown 7 times in size!) our subscriber base since those first six months!  We appreciate the interest you’ve shown in the topics and will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful eDiscovery news and analysis.  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Five Reasons to Outsource Litigation Support – eDiscovery Best Practices

When you’re Jackson Lewis and your firm’s national eDiscovery counsel is noted eDiscovery expert and founder of the new Electronic Discovery Best Practices (EDBP.com) (as well as previous thought leader interviewee on this blog) Ralph Losey, it would make sense that you would want to handle all of your litigation support work in house.  Right?  Wrong.

As Losey writes in the Law Technology News article Five Reasons to Outsource Litigation Support, in June, Jackson Lewis “decided to outsource to a vendor all of our nonlegal electronic data discovery work that our litigation support department had been providing to our clients.”  Losey identifies five reasons “[b]ased on our experience” why your organization should consider outsourcing.

  1. Core Competency: Losey asks the question “Why should you own and operate a nonlegal e-discovery business within your walls under the guise of a litigation support department?”  Collection, forensic analysis, processing, database creation and other related tasks are highly technical, nonlegal tasks that are the core competency of eDiscovery vendors, not law firms.  Losey notes that aside from the outsourcing of document review, the eDiscovery market is not “engaged in the practice of law”.
  2. Complexity: Losey notes that eDiscovery work “is not equivalent to making copies, as some lawyers think, and should not be done in-house, especially when there are so many good companies that specialize in this kind of work.”  Would you go to a general practitioner for heart bypass surgery?  Some tasks are best performed by specialists.
  3. Cost Savings: Keeping a litigation support business staffed with qualified people and current with hardware and software technology is expensive – it also adds considerably to firm overhead.  Losey notes that you “cannot give lawyers yesterday’s technology and expect them to compete.”  Would you give your attorneys out of date books on state and federal statutes for practicing law?  He also says “you can leverage your mass buying power and negotiate a low rate for all of your clients” that use your selected vendor.  Frankly, I’m surprised more firms don’t consider this – it’s a win-win for all as many vendors are willing to discount services for continual business.
  4. Risk: Losey states that “[m]istakes can happen, especially when a firm is operating outside of its core competency” and that firms often build the risk into their rates, which can penalize clients who don’t use the nonlegal services.  Again, giving the work to the organization best qualified to perform the work – the eDiscovery vendor – only makes sense.
  5. Ethics: The Comment to ABA Model Rule of Professional Responsibility 5.7 says, “When a lawyer performs law-related services or controls an organization that does so, there exists the potential for ethical problems.”  Just because “everyone does it” doesn’t make it right.  Losey notes that some ethical issues can be raised by outsourcing as well, but that’s true of any profession and that Jackson Lewis uses “whatever vendor the client wants” with direct billing from vendor to client.  Most vendors like that arrangement as well, it streamlines on time payment of invoices to the vendor for work performed.

So, what do you think?  How does your organization handle litigation support?  Do you outsource it or do you handle it in house?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Daily is Two Years Old Today!
 

It’s hard to believe that it has been two years ago today since we launched the eDiscoveryDaily blog.  Now that we’ve hit the “terrible twos”, is the blog going to start going off on rants about various eDiscovery topics, like Will McAvoy in The Newsroom?   Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Wouldn’t that be fun!

As we noted when recently acknowledging our 500th post, we have seen traffic on our site (from our first three months of existence to our most recent three months) grow an amazing 442%!  Our subscriber base has nearly doubled in the last year alone!  We now have nearly seven times the visitors to the site as we did when we first started.  We continue to appreciate the interest you’ve shown in the topics and will do our best to continue to provide interesting and useful eDiscovery news and analysis.  That’s what this blog is all about.  And, in each post, we like to ask for you to “please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic”, so we encourage you to do so to make this blog even more useful.

We also want to thank the blogs and publications that have linked to our posts and raised our public awareness, including Pinhawk, The Electronic Discovery Reading Room, Unfiltered Orange, Litigation Support Blog.com, Litigation Support Technology & News, Ride the Lightning, InfoGovernance Engagement Area, Learn About E-Discovery, Alltop, Law.com, Justia Blawg Search, Atkinson-Baker (depo.com), ABA Journal, Complex Discovery, Next Generation eDiscovery Law & Tech Blog and any other publication that has picked up at least one of our posts for reference (sorry if I missed any!).  We really appreciate it!

We like to take a look back every six months at some of the important stories and topics during that time.  So, here are some posts over the last six months you may have missed.  Enjoy!

We talked about best practices for issuing litigation holds and how issuing the litigation hold is just the beginning.

By the way, did you know that if you deleted a photo on Facebook three years ago, it may still be online?

We discussed states (Delaware, Pennsylvania and Florida) that have implemented new rules for eDiscovery in the past few months.

We talked about how to achieve success as a non-attorney in a law firm, providing quality eDiscovery services to your internal “clients” and how to be an eDiscovery consultant, and not just an order taker, for your clients.

We warned you that stop words can stop your searches from being effective, talked about how important it is to test your searches before the meet and confer and discussed the importance of the first 7 to 10 days once litigation hits in addressing eDiscovery issues.

We told you that, sometimes, you may need to collect from custodians that aren’t there, differentiated between quality assurance and quality control and discussed the importance of making sure that file counts add up to what was collected (with an example, no less).

By the way, did you know the number of pages in a gigabyte can vary widely and the same exact content in different file formats can vary by as much as 16 to 20 times in size?

We provided a book review on Zubulake’s e-Discovery and then interviewed the author, Laura Zubulake, as well.

BTW, eDiscovery Daily has had 150 posts related to eDiscovery Case Law since the blog began.  Fifty of them have been in the last six months.

P.S. – We still haven't missed a business day yet without a post.  Yes, we are crazy.

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

eDiscovery Milestones: Our 500th Post!

One thing about being a daily blog is that the posts accumulate more quickly.  As a result, I’m happy to announce that today is our 500th post on eDiscoveryDaily!  In less than two years of existence!

When we launched on September 20, 2010, our goal was to be a daily resource for eDiscovery news and analysis and we have done our best to deliver on that goal.  During that time, we have published 144 posts on eDiscovery Case Law and have identified numerous cases related to Spoliation Claims and Sanctions.   We’ve covered every phase of the EDRM life cycle, including:

We’ve discussed key industry trends in Social Media Technology and Cloud Computing.  We’ve published a number of posts on eDiscovery best practices on topics ranging from Project Management to coordinating eDiscovery within Law Firm Departments to Searching and Outsourcing.  And, a lot more.  Every post we have published is still available on the site for your reference.

Comparing our first three months of existence with our most recent three months, we have seen traffic on our site grow an amazing 442%!  Our subscriber base has nearly doubled in the last year alone!

And, we have you to thank for that!  Thanks for making the eDiscoveryDaily blog a regular resource for your eDiscovery news and analysis!  We really appreciate the support!

I also want to extend a special thanks to Jane Gennarelli, who has provided some wonderful best practice post series on a variety of topics, ranging from project management to coordinating review teams to learning how to be a true eDiscovery consultant instead of an order taker.  Her contributions are always well received and appreciated by the readers – and also especially by me, since I get a day off!

We always end each post with a request: “Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.”  And, we mean it.  We want to cover the topics you want to hear about, so please let us know.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back with a new, original post.  In the meantime, feel free to click on any of the links above and peruse some of our 499 previous posts.  Maybe you missed some?  😉

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

eDiscovery Trends: eDiscovery Work is Growing in Law Firms and Corporations
 

There was an article in Law Technology News last Friday (Survey Shows Surge in E-Discovery Work at Law Firms and Corporations, written by Monica Bay) that discussed the findings of a survey released by The Cowen Group, indicating that eDiscovery work in law firms and corporations is growing considerably.  Eighty-eight law firm and corporate law department professionals responded to the survey.

Some of the key findings:

  • 70 percent of law firm respondents reported an increase in workload for their litigation support and eDiscovery departments (compared to 42 percent in the second quarter of 2009);
  • 77 percent of corporate law department respondents reported an increase in workload for their litigation support and eDiscovery departments;
  • 60 percent of respondents anticipate increasing their internal capabilities for eDiscovery;
  • 55 percent of corporate and 62 percent of firm respondents said they "anticipate outsourcing a significant amount of eDiscovery to third-party providers” (some organizations expect to both increase internal capabilities and outsource);
  • 50 percent of the firms believe they will increase technology speeding in the next three months (compared to 31 percent of firms in 2010);
  • 43 percent of firms plan to add people to their litigation support and eDiscovery staff in the next 3 months, compared to 32 percent in 2011;
  • Noting that “corporate legal departments are under increasing pressure to ‘do more with less in-house to keep external costs down’”, only 12 percent of corporate respondents anticipate increasing headcount and 30 percent will increase their technology spend in the next six months;
  • In the past year, 49 percent of law firms and 23 percent of corporations have used Technology Assisted Review/ Predictive Coding technology through a third party service provider – an additional 38 percent have considered using it;
  • As for TAR/Predictive Coding inhouse, 30 percent of firms have an inhouse tool, and an additional 35 percent are considering making the investment.

As managing partner David Cowen notes, “Cases such as Da Silva Moore, Kleen, and Global Aerospace, which have hit our collective consciousness in the past three months, affect the investments in technology that both law firms and corporations are making.”  He concludes the Executive Summary of the report with this advice: “Educate yourself on the latest evolving industry trends, invest in relationships, and be an active participant in helping your executives, your department, and your clients ‘do more with less’.”

So, what do you think?  Do any of those numbers and trends 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Careers: Achieving Success as a Non-Attorney in a Law Firm: Find/Make the Right Environment, Part 1
 

Last week, I introduced a new series regarding achieving success as a non-attorney in a law firm.  One key to achieving success is being in an environment that permits it. In the next posts I’m going to talk about the type of environment that fosters growth and success. Let me make it very clear, however, that I am NOT suggesting you look at these posts and decide that it’s time to call a recruiter! There are a few things you should keep in mind as you read the first few posts in this series:

  • It is unlikely that any firm is going to be the perfect environment.
  • Even if you determine your firm may not be the best place to attain your ultimate goals, it may be exactly what you need today.  It may be the right place to develop essential skills that you’ll need.
  • If things aren’t in place at your firm today that would make it the right environment, that could be an opportunity rather than a negative. I’ll expand on that a bit later in the series.

So, my purpose in talking about “the right environment” is not to encourage you to start shopping around.  I’m discussing this so that if and when the time does come for you to move on, you can use these points as a guide for assessing firms you are considering:

  1. How significant is the litigation practice to the firm?  If litigation is a small part of the firm’s overall practice, that could hinder your chance for senior level status.  You’ve got a better chance of being noticed if you are working in a practice area that is very significant to the firm.
  2. How widely used is technology in the firm?  This is becoming less and less of an issue — especially at large firms.  Occasionally, however, I still run into firms that have a fair number of attorneys who just don’t want to use technology.  Don’t be concerned specifically about the use of litigation support technology.  If the attorneys are technically solid otherwise, this could be an opportunity rather than a negative.
  3. How aggressive is the firm’s marketing?  This is an indication that the firm recognizes the need to be competitive and has taken steps to do so.  Does the firm highlight litigation support and electronic discovery services in its marketing to potential clients?  If it doesn’t, this might be an opportunity rather than a negative.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue with additional things to look at when assessing an environment. So, what do you think?  Do you have suggestions for what to look for?  Please let us know 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Careers: Achieving Success as a Non-Attorney in a Law Firm — Introduction
 

In the 30+ years that I’ve been working in litigation, I’ve seen a dramatic change in law firm culture and operations.  Let me start with what it was like way back when:

  • Law firms thrived simply by having talented attorneys with winning records.
  • Law firms got business based almost exclusively on the relationships that partners had with clients.
  • It didn’t matter if law firms were behind the rest of the world with regard to technology use.  Clients didn’t care.
  • Clients didn’t pay too much attention to bills.  Attorneys were expensive and that’s just the way it was.

This meant that law firms didn’t have to operate efficiently.  They did legal work, they billed their clients, they got paid, and they got more business.

How times have changed!  Here’s what it’s like today:

  • Clients pay close attention to the costs of legal representation. 
  • Clients want to know how much legal services will cost.  They want to know what they’ll be paying for.  They want to know what type of people will be working on their cases and how much those people cost. 
  • Clients dictate what they will pay for and what they won’t.
  • Clients want to know what technology will be used.   
  • Clients scrutinize bills and they question costs that they think are excessive or didn’t expect

In short, clients have forced law firms to be competitive, to do marketing, and – most significantly – to be efficient.  Clients are forcing law firms to operate like the rest of the business world.

This shift in operations and culture means more opportunities for non-attorney professionals.  Law firms today need more than talented attorneys.  They also need talented business, technology, and marketing professionals.

Today, I see more and more non-attorneys attaining senior level positions and high compensation levels in law firms.  I see non-attorneys treated as equals by senior partners in law firms.  I have also, though, seen very talented people who haven’t climbed that ladder of success in a law firm.  The difference doesn’t always come down to knowledge and skills.  To achieve that success, we have to do more than be good at our jobs.  That’s what I’ll be focusing on in this blog series.  I’ll walk you through some steps you can take and techniques you can employ that will increase your odds of grabbing that brass ring. Specifically, we’ll cover six general topics:

  1. Find/make the right environment
  2. Know your stuff
  3. Make yourself well-known
  4. Make yourself critical
  5. Expand what you do
  6. Master some good habits

Next week, we will begin talking about finding/making the right environment.  See you then!

So, what do you think?  Have you gotten to the position you’ve sought in your firm?  Do you have tips you can share?  Please let us know 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Best Practices: See Jane Teach – How To Manage Litigation Projects
 

One major problem that many organizations are facing these days in large-scale litigation is that the demand for project managers far exceeds the supply.  Law firms find themselves moving talented — but inexperienced — professionals into project management positions. Electronic discovery experts, litigation paralegals, technically savvy litigation support professionals, and even attorneys are taking on project management responsibilities with little experience or training.

You may have noticed we haven’t had any new posts from Jane Gennarelli lately.  Believe it or not, we all have “day jobs” here at eDiscoveryDaily and Jane’s “day job” is as principal of Magellan’s Law Corporation> where she has been assisting litigators in effectively handling discovery materials for over 30 years.  In that role, Jane has been busy lately with a Magellan's Law training program for aspiring litigation project managers.

Magellan’s Law Project Management training program is designed for project managers who need help to develop expertise on project management best practices.  The project management skills, components, and techniques covered in the class will prepare students to manage any of the document handling tasks associated with litigation discovery – everything from identification and collection through production.  Among other things, students learn:

  • Project management tasks in discovery
  • Skills and techniques for managing project staff
  • Skills and techniques for managing clients
  • How to prepare reliable schedules and budgets
  • Mechanisms for controlling costs throughout a project
  • Techniques for ensuring high-quality and defensible work product
  • Tips for effectively managing time
  • How to build good relationships with clients and project stakeholders
  • Problem solving techniques and skills
  • How to evaluate, select and manage the right vendors for a project

The class is taught at your facility, at your convenience, so Jane comes to you!  To find out more about the class, click here.  You can also give Jane a call @ (210)561-5626 to find out more.  She can put you in touch with students who have taken the class to enable you to hear firsthand from people in the trenches who have benefitted from the class.

As for Jane’s contribution to eDiscovery Daily, she will be publishing a new series to provide best practices for non-attorneys providing litigation and eDiscovery support services to achieve success in a law firm.  This series should debut in the next week or so.  Welcome back, Jane!

So, what do you think?  Do you feel overwhelmed trying to manage litigation and eDiscovery 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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Trends: One Third of Surveyed Attorneys Plans to Increase eDiscovery Spending
 

A new survey from Robert Half Legal eDiscovery Services finds that spending by organizations on electronic discovery-related services grew in 2011 and should continue to increase through 2013.  According to the survey of 350 attorneys in large law firms and corporations in the US and Canada, 23 percent of attorneys surveyed said their law firms and corporate legal departments increased eDiscovery expenditures in the last year, with 71 percent indicating that spending remained the same and just 2 percent indicating that they reduced spending.  For 2012 and 2013, nearly one-third (33 percent) of attorneys expected to increase spending on eDiscovery, while 56 percent expect no change in spending and 4 percent expect to decrease eDiscovery spending.

Other interesting findings from the survey include:

  • 27 percent of attorneys surveyed indicated that they don’t currently have a standard operating procedure in place in the event they receive an unexpected request for discovery;
  • 15 percent of survey participants are “not at all confident” that their organization has an eDiscovery plan in place to respond to a request for cloud-based information in response to a regulatory request or litigation;
  • 22 percent of attorneys surveyed are “not at all confident” that their organization has an eDiscovery plan in place to respond to a request for information from social media sites in response to a regulatory request or litigation;
  • Survey respondents indicated that their organization has received an average of 16 external requests for electronically stored information (ESI) in the last three years;
  • 12 percent of attorneys surveyed stated that issues or problems with collecting or reviewing ESI negatively affected a case or ruling for their law firm or company in the last three years;
  • 22 percent of responding corporate lawyers said their organization increased its handling of eDiscovery projects in house within the last year.

This study, and the IBISWorld study from last fall, point to continued growth in eDiscovery activities and spending.  It seems apparent that, as data within the world continues to double every 1.5 to 2 years, many law firms and corporations are having to “ramp up” to meet their eDiscovery obligations.

So, what do you think?  Do these results surprise you?  If so, are they higher or lower than you expected?  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 Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm: Closing Thoughts
 

In the past few weeks we’ve talked about various marketing techniques and mechanisms that — in my experience — work well in a law firm.  In closing, I have just a few additional thoughts I’d like to share with you on the subject.

  • Whether you realize it or not, everyone in the department is involved in marketing.  Your clients’ interactions with department members form their impression of your services.  Everyone in the department, therefore, is contributing in a positive, neutral, or negative way to marketing.  Work with the members of your department to ensure that everyone is contributing in a positive way.  Make sure that everyone is projecting a spirit of cooperation and an eagerness to help.
  • You want your clients to see you as a peer.  You don’t want to be viewed as “the help”.  You want the relationship to be one of partnership.  How do you make this happen?  First, practice the techniques we covered for building good relationships and for providing suburb customer service.  Next, be confident in what you know and what you can do.  You are the expert.  You want your clients to see you as such.  And last, project the right image.  Look and act like you belong in your client’s environment.  
  • Always remember that everyone you talk to in the firm is a potential customer or has links to a potential customer.  So every interaction you have should be viewed as a marketing opportunity.
  • Make this a goal:  Everyone in the firm will know who you are, what you do, how you can solve their problems, and how they can reach you.

I hope you enjoyed this series on marketing litigation support services within a law firm.  Let us know what you think.  And be sure to let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.