eDiscovery Daily Blog
eDiscovery Trends: Service Providers Unite!
While mergers and acquisitions of major eDiscovery providers (such as Symantec’s acquisition of Clearwell and HP’s acquisition of Autonomy) dominate the headlines, the majority of eDiscovery providers are actually small to midsized companies that provide a full range of services from coast to coast. To enable the small/midsized providers to compete with the eDiscovery “bohemoths” of the world, Jerry Correia and Greg Bayless formed the Legal Service Providers Association (LSPA).
The LSPA’s mission is to help the small/midsized legal service providers grow and thrive by providing access to increased sales and marketing opportunities, training and certification programs, supplier discounts, and human resources support. The idea is that “strength in numbers” can enable LSPA’s members to compete on an equal footing with the “big boys”.
Jerry and Greg have 38 years experience in the legal services industry, managing companies providing services to law firms and corporate legal departments. They’ve spent the last 15 years to running companies focused on helping vendors in the legal services industry improve and grow by providing training, consulting, staffing and national referral services. They started the LSPA in January of this year with the belief that small to midsized companies are the best suited for and the most dedicated to providing the service excellence clients have come to expect and demand, but few providers can develop and negotiate the kinds of programs and discounts available to Fortune 500 corporations by themselves. Through membership in the LSPA, members can benefit from savings including up to 60% from suppliers such as Staples or UPS, which not only benefits the providers, but also their clients where savings can be passed along.
Since announcing its charter member program back in February, the LSPA has added 40 charter members to date. While all members of the LSPA enjoy benefits such as training and supplier credits and discounts, and sales/marketing and technical support, charter member companies receive additional exposure and branding opportunities through premium placements on their website, emails, press releases and newsletters.
Part of LSPA’s education program includes webinars available to its members. In the past two months, LSPA has conducted webinars related to understanding the risks associated with collecting ESI (conducted by Jason Park, owner of MD5 Group) and top 10 eDiscovery trends and predictions (conducted by Maura R. Grossman, Counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and Ronald J. Hedges, former United States Magistrate Judge).
Want to learn more? Tomorrow, the LSPA is conducting an Informational and Membership Benefits webinar where they will discuss the vision for the LSPA, describe member benefits and discuss how to join the organization. To register for the webinar, click here.
So, what do you think? Do you use small or medium providers for eDiscovery services? Does the LSPA make those providers better? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: CloudNine Discovery is a charter member of the LSPA.