eDiscovery Daily Blog

• March 3, 2016

This is a rare two-topic day, but both of these topics are interesting enough that I decided neither could wait until next Tuesday (which is the next day that we’re not publishing a thought leader interview)…

First, you may recall that, last month, we discussed Rob Robinson’s eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey, which he was conducting through the end of February.  The survey has now concluded and Rob has published the results on his terrific Complex Discovery site.  There were 80 total respondents to the survey, which is a reasonably good number, especially for a two-week survey.  Here are some notable results:

• Providers Were the Majority Respondents: Of the types of respondents, 55 out of 80 were either Software and/or Services Provider (37.5%) or Consultancy (31.3%) for a total of 68.8% of respondents as some sort of outsourced provider. Law firm respondents were next with 20%.
• Most Respondents Consider Business to Be Good: Over half (58.8%, to be exact) of respondents rated the current general business conditions for eDiscovery in their segment to be good, with only 10% rating business conditions as bad.
• Almost Everyone Expects eDiscovery Business to be as Good or Better Six Months From Now: Almost all respondents (93.7%) expect business conditions will be in their segment to be the same or better six months from now, with 60% of respondents expecting higher revenue six months from now and 45% of respondents expecting higher profits six months from now.
• Budgetary Constraints and Data Security are Expected to be Most Impact eDiscovery Business: Perhaps the most interesting question is the one where Rob asked which issue that you feel will most impact the business of eDiscovery over the next six months. Budgetary Constraints (22.5%) led the way, closely followed by Data Security (21.3%), Increasing Volumes of Data (20%), Lack of Personnel (16.2%), Increasing Types of Data (13.8%) and finally, Inadequate Technology (6.3%).  I was surprised how even the distribution was across most of the categories.  The graph below illustrates the distribution.

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

One of the great things about LegalTech New York (LTNY) is the ability to, not only to catch up with familiar faces, but also to meet new thought leaders in the industry.  One of those that I met this year for the first time was Chris Dale, director of the UK-based eDisclosure Information Project, whose thought leader interview will be published tomorrow.

Another was Andrew Haslam, who has a terrific UK-based (it was my year to meet Brits!) site called Allvision, where he publishes various posts, including an annual Buyer’s Guide to eDisclosure Systems and a report from LTNY every year.  This year’s report –titled LegalTech 2016 – Cloud, Consolidation and Cybersecurity (which is comprehensive and succinct at the same time) checks in at 18 pages and is well worth the read.  Here is the link to the report.

Andrew clearly gets around during the show, attending sessions and also meeting with lots of companies during the show.  In his report, he obtained quotes from and reported meetings with several of them, including Litsavant, Yerra Solutions, Control Risk, TRU Staffing Partners, Consilio, kCura, Ricoh, Zapproved, Venio Systems, FTI, QuisLex, TCDI, QDiscovery, Xact Data Discovery, Opus 2 International, Catalyst, UnitedLex, Guidance, IPro, and (last, but not least) CloudNine.  It was nice to meet Andrew and nice to see our write-up as well as to see quotes from us about the show.  As for plans for expansion to the UK (which I love and spent part of my honeymoon in 2014), my motto is “never say never!”  Of course, I will be happy to volunteer to set that up.  :o)

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.