Our Insights on eDiscovery

Unfortunately, it’s just not possible to know up-front precisely what a litigation support or eDiscovery project will cost. There are too many unknowns, and, therefore, too many opportunities for surprises regarding costs. You can, however, avoid some of those surprises with good upfront communication with the vendor. Here are some steps you can take to prevent surprises and control costs.

So many law firm litigation support folks that I know have an unpleasant war story or two about a project they did with a vendor. I usually find these frustrating, because more often than not, the problems could have been avoided. Taking a few preventative steps early on, and doing a good job of monitoring project activity can make all the difference. In the next few posts in this series, we’re going to look at ways to make the projects you do with vendors run smoother.

A little over a month ago, I noted that we hadn’t missed a (business) day yet in publishing a post for the blog. That streak almost came to an end last week. As I often do in the early mornings before getting ready for work, I spent some time searching for articles to read and identifying potential blog topics and found a link on a site related to “New Federal Rules”. Curious, I clicked on it and…up popped a pop-up window from our virus checking software (AVG Anti-Virus, or so I thought) that the site had found a file containing a “trojan horse” program. The odd thing about the pop-up window is that there was no “Fix” button to fix the trojan horse. So, I chose the best available option to move it to the vault. Then, all hell broke loose.

Last week, we started and continued a list of questions to ask when you are doing a reference check. So far, the list includes general project questions, questions about communicating with the vendor, questions about costs, and questions aimed at evaluating the quality of a vendor’s work. Today we’ll complete the list with questions about the vendor’s ability to meet schedule requirements, and questions aimed at assessing the vendor’s overall performance.

As eDiscovery Daily has done in the past, we have periodically interviewed various thought leaders in eDiscovery and legal technology to provide insight as to trends in the industry for our readers to consider. Recently, I was able to interview Jeffrey Brandt, Editor of the Pinhawk Law Technology Daily Digest and columnist for Legal IT Professionals. Here is that interview.

Yesterday, we started a list of questions to ask when you are doing a reference check. That list included general project questions, questions about communicating with the vendor, and questions about costs. Here are some questions aimed at uncovering information on the quality of the vendor’s work.

Getting good information about a vendor in a reference check is a skill worth developing. As a starting point, you should be armed with a good set of questions. Don’t limit yourself to the list, though. A good reference-check call will be interactive and answers to some questions will probably prompt additional questions. Here’s a good starting point list that might apply to any type of vendor or service you are inquiring about.