Ediscovery Trends

In a recent post, Paul Easton discusses an article on the traits of effective Legal Project Managers.  It’s a nice read, and affirms what I’ve been thinking in terms of roles for legal project managers.

First, there has to be methodology and documentation of processes.  As ediscovery rules change, PMs have to be able to adapt these new rules into their existing processes, and create new processes to accommodate new information.  If your legal project manager is unable to do this, it could mean they do not have a thorough grasp of what’s going on (or are powerless to implement changes).  If your PM has a good understanding of what’s going on, they will be able to offer quality suggestions for process improvements, and be willing to accept responsibility if something goes wrong.  The litigation support industry could always use more people like that!

In the process of litigation, it is sometimes necessary to conduct a full-scale document review.  Your litigation support vendor probably has a few ideas on how to approach such a large project, but the sticker shock can be a bit overwhelming.  Let’s look at what you’re really getting into when you need to budget for a document review project.

The first thing to look at is how many total documents you have, and what your resources are expected to be.  If you have ten million responsive documents and an unlimited budget, then you can afford to pay attorneys to review them all by hand.  But if you only want the documents that are most relevant to your litigation, I’d recommend culling the data set through an advanced search platform.

While the upfront cost for some vendors like Clearwell or Kazeon may be high, the long-term savings are there, especially for large projects.  You don’t need to hire 20 attorneys to sit in a room for months reviewing documents – not only can you reduce the overall volume of responsive documents, but you can also classify them much more efficiently than was previously possible.

After your data set is culled down, you’ll want to look at a review tool that can handle what you want to do with these electronic documents.  If it is a small case, you may wish to review them locally, but if it’s a large case involving multiple law firms, you will need to make sure that the documents can be securely accessed online.

I’ll offer more tips on effective document review sometime next week.

Often when you’re faced with a problem with your litigation support software, it’s tempting to blame the vendor, either the one who sold you the ediscovery software, or the one who provided the load file.  But before we play that game, remember that those vendors are there to serve you, so take advantage of them!

Load files, for example, come in many different shapes and sizes.  Summation load files in particular can be problematic, and every law firm handles Summation databases differently.  Be sure to specify to your vendor what fields you want included, how you will load full text, and how you want the images for your documents numbered.  Summation load files have changed over the years, and you can bet the vendor that provided the file to you is probably up on the latest litigation support technology, so be sure to ask them why they did things a certain way.

Concordance load files are relatively simple, with separate files for the images, metadata, and fulltext.  This makes problems relatively easy to troubleshoot.

The point is not that one document review platform is better than another, but rather that your ediscovery vendor is probably very familiar with the software that they provide load files for.  If you’re having trouble, be sure to ask them for help – most vendors will do almost anything to retain a client!

Here’s an interesting interview with Alice Burns regarding legal project management.  Litigation support jobs are certainly going to take on more of a project management role moving forward, as lawyers are willing to sacrifice a bit of control in order to practice law (and leave the details to legal support staff).

Alice Burns discusses her clinic entitled “Project Management for Litigation”, ediscovery and litigation support certifications, PMP credentials, the use of a Six Sigma framework in litigation management.  There’s also an interesting chart demonstrating the different roles that a project manager needs to play in the litigation support industry.  The chart also lays out different responsibilities for different roles on your team – what paralegals should be doing, what internal lit support should be doing, what should be outsourced to vendors, etc.

While the post doesn’t mention ediscovery specifically, it’s a good primer if you’re looking for some insight into the complexity of litigation in today’s world.

According to research done by TREC, keyword searches are largely ineffective at locating key documents.  Best practices include working with opposing counsel to identify key terms and dates.  Finding a proper date range can easily pare down the documents that you will eventually pay a contract attorney to review.

Coming up with good keywords is also a high priority when asking opposing counsel to search documents.  If your keyword list is too broad, you will return far too many documents (and possibly be seen as overly burdensome), and if your terms are too narrow, you’re not going to find that smoking gun you’re looking for.  Try to think of reasonable a minimum and maximum number of documents that would be acceptable to review, given the scope of the litigation you’re facing.

Don’t be afraid to go back to opposing counsel to modify your request for production of documents, but be sure to properly review the existing documents you have.  You don’t want to ask multiple times to expand the scope of production, so be patient with the document review process before doing anything drastic.  Of course, check in with your litigation support staff to see if there are any ways to more quickly and effectively search the documents you already have.

Electronic Discovery and Litigation Support are increasingly important aspects to law firms.  Computer forensics becomes an issue that can make or break a case.  By streamlining the document management process in preparation for litigation, firms are able to save money by taking ediscovery software in-house.

Because ediscovery costs continue to rise, many law firms are able to take advantage of litigation software as more than just a document management system, but also as a potential avenue for revenue.  Litigation support software helps lawyers find relevant information quickly so they can continue to practice law rather than review documents.