eDiscovery Daily Blog

George Socha of Socha Consulting LLC: eDiscovery Trends

This is the sixth of the 2015 LegalTech New York (LTNY) Thought Leader Interview series. eDiscovery Daily interviewed several thought leaders at LTNY this year and generally asked each of them most of the following questions:

  1. What are your general observations about LTNY this year and how it fits into emerging trends? Do you think American Lawyer Media (ALM) should consider moving LTNY to a different time of year to minimize travel disruptions due to weather?
  2. Two or three years ago, the “next big thing” was probably technology assisted review; last year, it was probably information governance. What would you say this year’s “next big thing” is, or do you think we have one this year?
  3. Last year, most thought leaders agreed that, despite numerous resources in the industry, most attorneys still don’t know a lot about eDiscovery. Do you think anything has been done in the past year to improve the situation?
  4. What are you working on that you’d like our readers to know about?

Today’s thought leader is George Socha. A litigator for 16 years, George is President of Socha Consulting LLC, offering services as an electronic discovery expert witness, special master and advisor to corporations, law firms and their clients, and legal vertical market software and service providers in the areas of electronic discovery and automated litigation support. George has also been co-author of the leading survey on the electronic discovery market, The Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey; in 2011, he and Tom Gelbmann converted the Survey into Apersee, an online system for selecting eDiscovery providers and their offerings. In 2005, he and Tom Gelbmann launched the Electronic Discovery Reference Model project to establish standards within the eDiscovery industry – today, the EDRM model has become a standard in the industry for the eDiscovery life cycle and there are nine active projects with over 300 members from 81 participating organizations. George has a J.D. for Cornell Law School and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

What are your general observations about LTNY this year and how it fits into emerging trends? Do you think American Lawyer Media (ALM) should consider moving LTNY to a different time of year to minimize travel disruptions due to weather?

{Interviewed the first morning of LTNY, so the focus of the question to George was more about his observations about the curriculum for the show and what to expect}.

It is a little early for general observations about LTNY – we haven’t even heard the opening keynote panel discussion – but here goes. Looking at the curriculum and talking with attendees, speakers and exhibitors, it appears we have reached a stage where a significant number of eDiscovery providers are turning their attention from the “traditional” eDiscovery market and are looking, instead, for new markets. First it was information governance, now the “flavor of the month” appears to be security. Some providers are, I suspect, looking for a larger pond, on with more for them to eat; others may feel that the eDiscovery pond is getting too crowded or, perhaps, beginning to dry out.

At the same time, a large portion of the legal industry continues to be ignored by the bulk of eDiscovery providers. Many providers deem most law firms to be too small to pursue. After all, which law firm do you think a provider is more likely to try to get work from, one with 5 lawyers, or one with 500? And with roughly 80% of the 57,000 or so law firms in the US having 5 lawyers or less, that leaves a lot of law firms who aren’t getting a lot of eDiscovery love. I suspect we will see this reflected in the content delivered at the educations session and in the focus of software and services on display in the exhibit hall.

As for whether ALM should consider moving LTNY to a different time of year to minimize travel disruptions due to weather… For me, one of the draws of LTNY is that I get to go somewhere warm in the beginning of February. But then, I live in Minnesota. I think LTNY has a lock on the place and time. Software providers plan major releases and updates with LTNY in mind. Providers of all stripes schedule their biggest announcements for the weeks before LTNY takes place. Consumers shopping for new providers and providers seeking new customers set up meetings for the entire week of LTNY, not just at the Hilton but at surrounding hotels as well. So, some other place, some other time, just because of the weather? I don’t think so.

Two or three years ago, the “next big thing” was probably technology assisted review; last year, it was probably information governance. What would you say this year’s “next big thing” is, or do you think we have one this year?

If I were to be glib, I would say that this year’s “next big thing” will be just one more “bright shiny object.” But that would not really be fair. We have had a “next big thing” happening for several years now. But it has not been TAR, or information governance, or ECA, or any of those. Rather, it has been the many incremental improvements made in the tools available to us, the processes we use, and the sophistication of the people using those tools to carry out those processes. While we are a long way from a mature industry and a mature market, nonetheless we have made huge advances.

Last year, most thought leaders agreed that, despite numerous resources in the industry, most attorneys still don’t know a lot about eDiscovery. Do you think anything has been done in the past year to improve the situation?

I agree with the assessment that most attorneys still don’t know a lot about eDiscovery. We have a long way to go. We make incremental improvements, but I off the top of my head I can’t think about any major advances in the past year.

What are you working on that you’d like our readers to know about?

We’ve been making a number of changes and advancements with EDRM over the past year, especially the past few months. Look to see much more in terms of efforts to focus on standards and on practical tools and capabilities. Also, look to see much more from us in terms of collaborative activities, such as the recent partnering announcements with ACEDS as an Affinity partner and eDiscovery Daily as an Education partner. We’ve broadened our base of membership in terms of types of members considerably over the last year – we have a much larger number of corporate members than ever in the past and, for the first time, we have governmental members. I think that change in membership and the continued push toward the practical will lead to further positive changes with EDRM.

Here are links to some of EDRM’s other most recent announcements, including an updated statistical sampling guide, clarification to its Model Code of Conduct and release of the EDRM eDiscovery Maturity Self-Assessment Test (eMSAT-1).

Thanks, George, for participating in the interview!

And to the readers, as always, 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. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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