As 2024 concludes, the eDiscovery and legal technology sectors have experienced significant advancements, particularly in the realms of modern data management and generative artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, we will explore what we have learned this year at the various thought leadership and industry conferences, how our innovations have benefited legal teams and how our partnerships allow our clients to have a fully streamlined experience with their eDiscovery and investigation challenges.
First, let’s look at what the industry has been discussing at thought leadership conferences like The Masters Conferences, LegalWeek and ILTACON.
Thought Leadership and Industry Challenges and Trends
Modern Data: An Ever-Growing Challenge and Solutions
Modern data presents an ever-growing challenge in eDiscovery, requiring innovative strategies and solutions to navigate its complexity. Traditional data sources, like physical documents and emails, have given way to a diverse array of corporate communications platforms such as WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams. These modern communication tools, designed for real-time and collaborative interactions, have become integral to business operations, reducing reliance on email but introducing new hurdles in data management. The shift has also brought about the emergence of non-custodial data, necessitating updated identification and preservation methods that account for transient membership in communication channels. Furthermore, data mapping must now encompass a multitude of sources beyond emails, including collaboration platforms, ephemeral messaging applications and the “linked files” in those platforms that replace traditional attachments.
Modern Data Preservation
The path from preservation to collection in complex ecosystems requires careful planning and execution. The widespread adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and the reliance on remote work have created a myriad of difficulties in data governance, raising regulatory and privacy concerns related to the use of personal devices for business purposes. Additionally, complexities such as managing group email boxes or distribution lists—like “info@” addresses—require specialized approaches to ensure thorough data collection. Collaboration platforms further complicate matters, as their varying access levels can impact data preservation efforts.
Custodian interviews are the first step in identifying these relevant data sources and communication habits and can narrow the scope of collection as well as help the legal team understand the intricacies of the corporation’s communication channels. Collaboration tools like Slack and Teams further complicate preservation efforts, as they often involve linked files and intricate metadata structures that must be maintained. Ephemeral messaging apps, with their automatic deletion features, pose additional risks, underscoring the need for proactive policies and training to ensure critical data is not lost.
Strategic preservation practices offer a path forward. Standardizing the use of fewer collaboration platforms can reduce complexity, while taking snapshots of data during litigation holds can ensure the preservation of critical document versions. Staying ahead of emerging data sources is equally important, enabling legal teams to adapt their workflows and address evolving eDiscovery demands effectively. These solutions are vital in navigating the multifaceted challenges of modern data and ensuring defensible and efficient eDiscovery processes.
Modern Data Collection Strategies – Smartphones and Devices
Mobile device forensic collections have become a growing evidence source for today’s eDiscovery and investigations, driven by the standardization of smartphones and tablets for personal and professional communication. Effective data collection requires software and strategies that account for the differences between iOS and Android platforms. iOS operates within a controlled ecosystem, offering streamlined processes but occasionally limiting data accessibility without the proper credentials or permissions. Conversely, Android’s flexibility allows for a broader range of data collection options but necessitates rigorous integrity checks to ensure the reliability of the extracted information.
The choice between remote and lab-based collection methods is another consideration. Remote methods, such as iTunes backups for iOS devices, are convenient and quick but often fall short of forensic standards of a complete collection. These methods may lack the ability to access encrypted, deleted, or system-level data critical to investigations. In contrast, lab-based collections provide the forensic rigor required for legal proceedings, offering comprehensive access to encrypted files, deleted information, and other data that remote methods cannot reach. This approach ensures defensibility and reliability, making it the preferred option in most forensic scenarios.
The popularity of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies introduces significant complexities to mobile data collection. BYOD practices blur the boundaries between personal and corporate data, creating privacy challenges that must be navigated with precision. Collections must adhere strictly to court orders and legal mandates, ensuring that only data relevant to the case is retrieved while respecting the individual’s privacy rights. Striking this balance is essential to maintaining compliance and fostering trust.
Compliance with evolving privacy laws adds another layer of responsibility to mobile device forensic collections. Emerging state-level regulations emphasize the need for careful handling of consumer data, imposing stringent requirements on how such data is accessed, processed, and preserved. Organizations must stay ahead of these legal developments to avoid potential liabilities and ensure ethical data management practices.
Mobile Device Management (MDM) policies, designed to secure corporate data on employee devices, can also complicate forensic collections. These policies often restrict access to certain device features or data, requiring collaboration with corporate IT teams to navigate these limitations effectively. Engaging IT support helps ensure that data is collected in accordance with both organizational policies and legal requirements, streamlining the process while maintaining compliance.
By employing tailored strategies for different platforms, prioritizing forensic soundness through lab-based methods, respecting privacy through limited and court-ordered collections, adhering to stringent privacy laws, and working closely with IT teams to address MDM challenges, organizations can successfully manage the complexities of mobile device forensic collections. These practices ensure that data is collected with precision, integrity, and compliance, supporting defensible outcomes in legal and investigative contexts.
Modern Data Review
Managing data from these modern communication tools poses unique challenges in the attorney-review process. For instance, converting dynamic communication formats into documents for traditional review can be both time-intensive and costly.
Addressing the challenges of modern data in eDiscovery requires a proactive and strategic approach that balances technical innovation with legal and regulatory compliance. By understanding the complexities of diverse data sources, adopting tailored preservation and collection workflows, and fostering collaboration among legal, IT, and compliance teams, organizations can streamline their eDiscovery processes while minimizing risks. Emphasizing privacy, defensibility, and adaptability ensures that legal teams remain equipped to handle the dynamic nature of modern communication and data ecosystems. Ultimately, embracing these best practices allows organizations to navigate the evolving landscape of eDiscovery with confidence and precision.
Another Consideration for Collection and Review: Linked Files in eDiscovery: Challenges and Solutions
The emergence of linked files, which are URLs pointing to cloud storage rather than traditional file attachments, has introduced a new layer of complexity in eDiscovery. As collaboration platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Slack become central to workplace communication, these linked files often contain critical information pertinent to legal cases. However, their unique characteristics present several challenges in discovery workflows.
Advancements in collection capabilities have made strides toward addressing these issues. Platforms such as Office 365 and Google Drive now support more robust collection mechanisms, enabling legal teams to retrieve linked files more efficiently. Despite these improvements, maintaining essential metadata and preserving the parent-child relationships between linked files and their originating communications remain significant hurdles. Without these relationships, understanding the context of a document or its relevance to a case can become a bottleneck in processing and review.
Judicial trends have also placed increasing importance on linked files in eDiscovery. Courts are progressively treating linked files as they would traditional attachments, requiring legal teams to make reasonable efforts to locate and produce them during discovery. This evolving expectation underscores the necessity of integrating linked files into standard eDiscovery workflows to ensure compliance and defensibility.
Addressing these challenges requires a proactive and systematic approach. Early custodian interviews are a crucial first step in identifying where linked files may reside and understanding how they are used within the organization. Coordinating with IT departments can further streamline the process, ensuring that data collection is both efficient and thorough. Additionally, preserving metadata integrity is essential, especially for linked files originating from international sources where compliance with regulations such as the GDPR must be maintained.
By prioritizing early identification and implementing strategies to preserve the integrity and relationships of linked files, legal teams can mitigate the challenges associated with these modern data sources by assembling the right teams and creating the proper workflows. As the use of cloud-based collaboration tools continues to grow, adapting eDiscovery practices to include linked files will remain essential for comprehensive and defensible discovery processes.
CloudNine Innovations and Service Offerings
In 2024, CloudNine integrated the modern data review and production technology from CloudNine Analyst into CloudNine Review, providing customers with one platform to seamlessly review both traditional and modern data. CloudNine Review users upload UFDR or Oxygen Forensics phone data directly to CloudNine Review, which then parses, threads, and deduplicates the contents. Customers then analyze the data just as it is presented on a custodian’s phone or chat software.
CloudNine also expanded Single Sign-On support. Initially released in late 2023, SSO support is now available for Okta, Azure AD, and Google Workspace. Single Sign-On provides more security and better user management for customers, making onboarding and offboarding users faster and more efficient.
CloudNine Review introduced a new view for production versions of images with the Production Viewer. Now users can check out either the original document, or the produced version, including any markups such as document numbering and redactions. This gives users a quick way to look at the produced version of data without having to dig through production exports.
Smart Filters have been a CloudNine Review differentiator for some time. Improvements were made to Smart Filters in 2024 to empower users to filter metadata in multiple views, including the Table View. Smart Filters are an intuitive, powerful way for users to drill down to responsive content without having to build complex searches.
CloudNine values transparency in reporting. In 2024, improvements were made to various reports that users can run out of CloudNine Review, including an improved billing report. This can be run at any time and will show project administrators what is being hosted and what the invoice for the month will look like, in advance of receiving it.
Search features were added in 2024, including linking of terms in the search hit screen to documents that contain the term. For example, if a user searches for “Company”, then the resulting hit report will contain a link to a list of the documents that have hits on the word “Company”. This allows users to quickly identify responsive content by reviewing a table view of metadata for those records, reaching that view with a click rather than multiple searches and tags.
Hit highlighting is another feature added to CloudNine Review in 2024. Users can go from their hit reports to near native views of the documents, with the hits highlighted in color for faster review and identification of context.
CloudNine Review is built to be intuitive and easy to use. With less than an hour of onboarding, users can fully dive into loading data, review, and production, all on their own. But for large, complex projects, or for clients who want to focus on other work, CloudNine offers a full services team of project managers and analysts. These become an extension of the client’s project team, managing data, coordinating reviews, and producing responsive content. Unlike competing platforms, CloudNine Review’s developers and services teams are directly linked, so if there is a challenge to overcome there is zero waiting for support.
CloudNine Partnerships
As CloudNine innovates to accommodate the legal industry with traditional data and the growing challenges in modern data types, we recognize that we can’t do it all, so we partner with other innovative companies to fill the gaps in technology and services. We continue to work with long-term partners like Gimmal and Integreon but have also added others in 2024 like Oxygen Forensics and eDiscovery AI. Here are the descriptions of our partners and growing partnerships.
Oxygen Forensics
As described above, there are many challenges and considerations when it comes to collecting data but isn’t just the collection process. We partnered with Oxygen Forensics to not only offer a solution for teams to collect data from devices like smartphones, laptops and other hardware, but also cloud platforms like Google, social media, Slack and the myriads of other SaaS companies where the evidence resides. The forensically sound collection is just the first part, though. Oxygen Forensics can also prepare the data and offer early case insights in the process. Oxygen’s platforms can also translate foreign languages, transcribe audio and video files and image categorization.
Check out our webinar for a deeper look at these features.
Integreon
One of the most expensive processes in eDiscovery is physical document review. CloudNine has partnered with Integreon to offer efficient large-scale document review. The complexities of modern data mixed with traditional email and efiles needs to have not only the best in technology, but reviewers who know how to combine these data types into a fluid document review. Integreon’s review teams are well versed in native reviews of modern data and can tag complete conversations that navigate from email to corporate chat apps and even end in a text message exchange. This example of cross-channel communications is just one of the many efficiencies in the partnership.
Here is a good example of how we work together: Tackling Large-Scale Review Efficiently: Tips from a GC (On-Demand Webinar)
Gimmal
Information Governance is constantly evolving and Gimmal provides best in class platforms to help organizations properly manage their corporate data. Since data complexities can start as far “upstream” in how data is managed in the corporate environment, it is important to have those data organized and ready for a litigation event. CloudNine partnered with Gimmal to take anything from their organized, litigation ready data into our review process.
eDiscovery AI
CloudNine has not only been continuing the innovation around traditional and modern data, but has partnered with eDiscovery AI, who is innovating generative artificial intelligence (GAI) for the expensive data and document review processes. CloudNine now offers AI based review through our partnership.
