eDiscovery Daily Blog
Working Successfully with eDiscovery and Litigation Support Service Providers: Components of a Preferred Vendor Program
Yesterday, we talked about a couple of different ways in which law firms work with litigation support and eDiscovery vendors. And, we talked about the advantages to a centralized approach and establishing a preferred vendor program. What, exactly, is a preferred vendor program? To most people, it’s having a list of pre-approved vendors that that can be called on as the need arises. That is certainly the core of a preferred vendor program. But, a good program goes a bit further. A good program has three basic components:
- It starts with a preferred vendor list. The first step in establishing a preferred vendor program is an evaluation and selection process. For each service for which you use vendors, you need to establish a list of vendors to do the work.
- It includes a formal mechanism for on-going evaluation of the work done by vendors on a case-by-case basis. You need to ensure that your list is “fresh”. Things change. Staff leaves. A vendor that is doing great work for you today may not be doing so eight months from now. You need a mechanism in place to evaluate the work a vendor does on every case. And that mechanism should include an easy way to incorporate input from end-users.
- It should include scheduled, formal re-evaluations to ensure that you’ve always got the best available vendors on your list. In addition to evaluating a vendor’s work after each project, the preferred vendor list should be periodically re-assessed. Are their new vendors that should be added? Are their better technologies that aren’t offered by the vendors on your list? Are the vendors on your list still consistently meeting your expectations? A formal re-review should be a planned, scheduled activity and done once a year or once every eighteen months.
In the next posts in this blog series, I’ll walk you through a step-by-step approach to establishing a preferred vendor program in your firm.
Does your firm have a preferred vendor program? What are the components of your program? Please share any comments you might have and let us know if you’d like to know more about an eDiscovery topic.