eDiscovery Daily Blog
Generate More Revenue For Your Law Firm with Modern eDiscovery
One of the biggest challenges for any business is discovering new revenue streams once your growth reaches its zenith. For most law firms, this creates a welcome opportunity to offer new and better solutions while bringing more revenue into the organization.
As technology evolves, so does the diversity of new data types. By expanding your firm’s ability effectively and accurately collect and analyze emerging data types, you create new opportunities to meet the changing needs of your clients.
Hit the eDiscovery Bullseye: The Latest Trends in Data Types
Electronically stored information (ESI) evolves every time new software is created. Whether it’s an updated version of current data or an entirely new data type, ESI is constantly changing.
To operate successfully, your law firm needs the ability to effectively process these modern data types. Consider the following statistics from two popular messaging applications – Microsoft Teams and Slack:
- Teams has 145 million daily active users
- Teams is used by more than 500,000 organizations as their default messaging platform
- Slack has 10 million daily active users
- Slack is used by 43% of Fortune 100 businesses
The sheer volume of modern data users creates an unmatched treasure trove of data vital to your client’s litigation. Other popular communication platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and WhatsApp also contribute to the unparalleled growth of modern data types.
However, only recently have legal professionals begun to see the benefits of reviewing these data types since their reliance on traditional data types was easy and typically, sufficient.
Everyone in the legal profession can benefit from the ability to collect and analyze messages and metadata from communication platforms. However, law firms and forensics companies in particular now understand the true value of other modern data like computer activity, geolocation, and financial transactions because it’s critically important to the success of their investigations.
Read a case study to learn how CloudNine is helped reconstruct conversations across multiple file types.
Why Modern Data Doesn’t Work Well with Traditional eDiscovery Platforms
Traditional data is typically straightforward in the form of Word documents, spreadsheets, and emails converted into PDF. The biggest issue with collecting and analyzing modern metadata on a traditional eDiscovery platform is compatibility.
Modern data transmitted by web clients and web servers is usually found within JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files. JSON files are the preferred format for almost every public web service available today, including Teams and Slack.
HTML is another popular file type used by websites and social media applications like Facebook and Twitter to create individual pages.
JSON and HTML cause problems with traditional eDiscovery because traditional platforms cannot extract the content and metadata and organize it into an easy-to-review format. The result is usually very difficult to read, let alone review for eDiscovery.
Another challenge is simply the cost. In Zubulake v USB Warburg, the courts found the defendants were required to provide all relevant data files related to the case at their own expense. If your client is a large corporation, this could mean a large volume of devices to be collected for eDiscovery, which will naturally raise costs.
Tip the Scales of Justice with a Modern eDiscovery Platform
As applications like Teams and Slack make modern data more common, it has become more acceptable to be used in litigation. In the past, attorneys would argue to have modern data dismissed, and more often than not, the judge would allow it. Today’s judges have a better understanding of the value of emerging data so they require it for eDiscovery.
Modern eDiscovery platforms can collect a variety of modern data and accurately prepare it for review. Data types under this umbrella include:
- Communication from messaging applications
- File sharing applications
- Metadata from video conferences
- Mobile messaging including text, SMS, and MMS
- Computer activity including the movement and alteration of files
- GeoLocation
- Social media posts
- Financial transactions
In addition, by leveraging a modern data review platform, you can collect communication across multiple applications and devices. Based on the metadata, you can create pristine communication threads that flow from one platform to another, giving you a more complete picture and the context to understand how people were behaving and why. That simply isn’t possible in a traditional eDiscovery platform.
Stay up to date on how CloudNine is revolutionizing eDiscovery by signing up for our regular eDiscovery updates and best practices.
How Law Firms Use Modern eDiscovery to Offer Better Solutions
When you have the ability to review modern data, you can manage your case more effectively and efficiently by consolidating the workflows of multiple processes using a single SaaS platform.
- Early Case Assessment. With CloudNine’s people and platforms, you are enabled to collect, cull, process and organize large amounts of modern data, to provide the needed insight to your case investigations to predict costs more accurately.
- Unified Review Workflows. A simplified and consolidated workflow allows you to process, sort, review, tag, and produce traditional and modern data quickly and accurately.
- Higher Level of Data Organization. By leveraging the metadata and conversation content, you can analyze and review all data types easier and more efficiently. This “Data NOT Documents” approach allows you to quickly narrow in on key conversations faster than traditional document review.
- Context to Understand the Whole Story. Following digital conversations across multiple platforms along with computer activity, geolocation, social media and financial transactions, you create a more complete narrative to add the context needed to understand the whole story.
With these benefits, you can now demonstrate maximum efficiency and offer unparalleled service to your clients.
Your clients are looking to you to provide the best legal advice and management of their data, regardless of data types, modern or traditional.
By offering a solution giving them equal access to both traditional and modern data types with CloudNine eDiscovery solutions. Request a free demo and let us show you how CloudNine can help you generate more revenue while better preparing your clients for litigation.
