eDiscovery Daily Blog

• October 22, 2015

According to the second annual Inside E-Discovery Survey by BDO Consulting, corporate organizations have made relatively little improvement in their eDiscovery technology capabilities over the past year, with the middle market falling the furthest behind.

The survey examined the opinions and insights of 140 senior in-house counsel at leading corporations throughout the US.  Some key findings include:

Adoption of New eDiscovery Technology:

• With regard to adoption of new eDiscovery technology, 40 percent of respondents indicated that they use technology assisted review (TAR), 22 percent indicated that they use data visualization, 18 percent indicated that they use mobile document review, 12 percent indicated that they use expedited document review utilizing features such as voice commands and short keys and 12 percent indicated that they use up-to-the-minute project statistics and tracking via customized customer portals.

“Middle Market” Lagging:

• 30 percent of organizations with revenues between $100 million and $1 billion (the “middle market”) have adopted technology-assisted review, compared to nearly half (47 percent) of organizations with revenues of $1 billion or above;
• Only 15 percent of middle market organizations have adopted data visualization techniques, compared to 27 percent of larger organizations; and
• 50 percent of middle market organizations indicated that they had adopted none of the five eDiscovery innovations/technological advances identified in the survey, compared to 38 percent of all organizations.

Biggest Challenges/Most Important Management Factors:

• When asked what new eDiscovery issues would have the greatest impact on their organizations, the top three issues identified were: Volume, Variety and Velocity of Disparate Data (49 percent), Escalating Cost of eDiscovery (42 percent) and Regulatory Activity (40 percent);
• In this order, respondents ranked Understanding universe of potential evidence early in case, Predicting total cost of eDiscovery early in case, Reducing eDiscovery review fees and Reducing eDiscovery processing fees as the top four most important factors affecting their management of eDiscovery in litigation.

Total eDiscovery Spending:

• 39 percent of respondents indicated that their total spending on eDiscovery would increase in the next year, 56 percent indicated that spending would stay about the same and only 5 percent indicated that eDiscovery spending would decrease.

The full survey is available from BDO Consulting here; if you prefer less reading, an infographic of the survey results is also available here.  Feel free to check out our blog post about last year’s survey here.

So, what do you think?  Do any of these results surprise you?  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.