eDiscovery Daily Blog

• August 3, 2016

We’ve covered two rounds of the quarterly eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey created by Rob Robinson and conducted on his terrific Complex Discovery site (previous results are here and here).  It’s time for the Summer 2016 Survey.  Befitting of the season, the survey has a HOT new affiliation with the Association of Certified eDiscovery Specialists (ACEDS).

As before, the eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey is a non-scientific survey designed to provide insight into the business confidence level of individuals working in the eDiscovery ecosystem. The term ‘business’ represents the economic factors that impact the creation, delivery, and consumption of eDiscovery products and services.  The purpose of the survey is to provide a subjective baseline for understanding the trajectory of the business of eDiscovery through the eyes of industry professionals.

Also as before, the survey asks questions related to how you rate general business conditions for eDiscovery in your segment of the eDiscovery market, both current and six months from now, a general sense of where you think revenue and profits will be for your segment of the market in six months and which issue do you think will most impact the business of eDiscovery over the next six months, among other questions.  It’s a simple nine question survey that literally takes about a minute to complete.  Who hasn’t got a minute to provide useful information?

Individual answers are kept confidential, with the aggregate results to be published on the ACEDS website (News & Press), on the Complex Discovery blog, and on selected ACEDS Affiliate websites and blogs (we’re one of those and we’ll cover the results as we have for the first two surveys) upon completion of the response period, which started on August 1 and goes through Wednesday, August 31.

What are experts saying about the survey?  Here are a couple of notable quotes:

Mary Mack, Executive Director of ACEDS stated: “The business of eDiscovery is an ever-present and important variable in the equation of legal discovery.  As financial factors are a primary driver in eDiscovery decisions ranging from sourcing and staffing to development and deployment, ACEDS sees value in regularly checking the business pulse of eDiscovery professionals. The eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey provides a tool to help take that pulse on a systematic basis and ACEDS looks forward to sponsoring, participating, and reporting on the results of this salient survey each quarter.”

George Socha, Co-Founder of EDRM and Managing Director of Thought Leadership of BDO stated: “In my experience, the successful conduct of eDiscovery is comprised of a balance of in-depth education, practical execution, and experience-based excellence.  The eDiscovery Business Confidence survey being highlighted by ACEDS is one of many industry surveys that positively contributes to this balance, as it provides a quarterly snapshot into the business of discovery. I highly encourage serious eDiscovery professionals to complete and consider this survey as a key tool for understanding the business challenges and opportunities in our profession.”

The more respondents there are, the more useful the results will be!  What more do you need?  Click here to take the survey yourself.  Don’t forget!

So, what do you think?  Are you confident in the state of business within the eDiscovery industry?  Share your thoughts in the survey and, as always, please share any comments you might have with us or let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Don’t forget that next Wednesday at 1:00pm ET, ACEDS will be conducting a webinar panel discussion, titled How Automation is Revolutionizing eDiscovery, sponsored by CloudNine.  Our panel discussion will provide an overview of the eDiscovery automation technologies and we will really take a hard look at the technology and definition of TAR and the limitations associated with both.  This time, Mary Mack, Executive Director of ACEDS will be moderating and I will be one of the panelists, along with Bill Dimm, CEO of Hot Neuron and Bill Speros, Evidence Consulting Attorney with Speros & Associates, LLC.  Click on the link here to register.

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.