A Bird's-eye View Of e-Discovery

Law firms are often faced with the dilemma of deciding how to collect, process and review discovery documents associated with major litigation. Discovery now typically includes the review of hard copies as well as “soft” copies of electronic media files in a variety of formats. It can get so complicated that attorneys sometimes feel they must conduct full discovery just to find out how to manage their discovery efforts.

There's even a nonprofit organization called the Litigation Support Vendor Association (www.lsva.com). Why? Well, there are more than 300 companies that claim to service some sector of the electronic data discovery (EDD) market. The list of vendors begins with 1stlegal Inc. and ends with ZyLAB Technologies. An inventory of all 339 companies in the space is available at Socha Consulting LLC.

According to the 2004 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey, EDD vendors' revenues rose from about $40 million in 1999 to about $430 million in 2003. Based on the popularity of the field ' as suggested by the sheer number of booths at the recent LegalTech 2005 trade show in New York ' those numbers are likely to be higher this year. [Editor's Note: American Lawyer Media, the parent company of Law Journal Newsletters, produces the LegalTech shows.]

EDD vendors generally provide document services in one or more of the following categories.

Selection

The legal team works with the full-service vendors to analyze information that may be necessary for production.

The full-service market leaders include, among others:

• Cricket Technologies, Reston, VA
• Daticon Inc., Norwich, CT
• Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc., Kirkland, WA
• Kroll Ontrack Inc., Eden Prairie, MN
• Lexis-Nexis Applied Discovery, Seattle
• Fios Inc., Portland, OR
• Stratify Inc., Mountain View, CA
• Attenex Corporation, Seattle
• IE Discovery Inc., Austin, TX
• InterLegis Inc., Dallas

Gathering

Documents are preserved and collected after selection.

Kroll Ontrack is well-known in this area (as well as in the full-service group), but Chicago-based Project Leadership Associates and Computer Forensics also provide these services.

Conversion

Documents are generally cleaned, coded, converted (usually to TIFF or PDF) and often reduced in size.

One of the leaders is this area is Phoenix, AZ-based SPI Litigation Direct LLC.

Others include:

• Planet Data Solutions, Elmsford, NY
• AA Scan Inc., Akron, OH
• codeMantra LLC, Plymouth Mtg., PA
• Cypher Coding Inc., Chicago

Restoration

Electronic information is restored from its existing electronic medium and prepared for use on an EDD platform, such as one provided by market leaders CaseShare Systems Inc., in Denver, and CaseCentral, in San Francisco.

Filtering

Sophisticated software allows the legal team to search electronic documents to find patterns and relationships in the data.

The leaders in this space are Stratify Inc. and Attenex Corp., but Los Gatos, CA-based InfoTame Corp. and Dallas-based Syngence LLC offer related services.

Delivery

The final set of discoverable material is produced and transferred into different formats, depending on the litigation requirements.

Large-document duplication services, such as Ikon Office Solutions Inc., tend to dominate this sector.

Also in this space are Washington, DC-based Access Litigation Support Services LLC, Pittsburgh-based Ditto Document Solutions and Copy Corps.

The purpose of the entire discovery process is generally to allow responsive documents to be used with software programs that provide litigation support, such as Dataflight Software's Concordance EX and Opticon, and Summation Blaze 2.5.

Your selection of a vendor may depend on the complexity of the material involved. The federal courts differentiate electronic discovery documents by their level of accessibility. The most accessible type of data is active, online data, which is information stored on computer hard drives. If you're dealing with the latter, you may need a more sophisticated vendor.

While conducting e-discovery and selecting vendors in the EDD market are daunting, EDD has not fundamentally altered the discovery process, experts say.

“e-Discovery is different than discovery of paper-based information, but it's still just part of the discovery process,” Chris May, CEO of IE Discovery, says. “Attorneys should not let the technical issues involved in e-discovery cause them to forgo the practice of reasonable discovery techniques.”

Conduct EDD Early And Often

According to May, successful firms bring in discovery support early on in the process to narrow the universe of possible discoverable documents. It's often the selection of that support that takes the time.

Firms should use vendors that have advanced technology, offer strong in-house capabilities, provide customization and process the work quickly, notes Kevin Carr, CEO of InterLegis. “The side with the best technology wins,” he says.

Also, because most discovery review is often done late at night and on weekends, responsiveness is essential, Carr adds.

“At InterLegis, for example, we provide an instant response any time of day at any time of the year,” says Carr. “An e-mail to [email protected] pages the entire team and a response is often provided to the client within minutes.”

While the field of discovery-support tools and vendors is crowded, there are probably only a few that suit your needs completely, and that could make the difference between winning and losing your case. Choose wisely.

Law firms are often faced with the dilemma of deciding how to collect, process and review discovery documents associated with major litigation. Discovery now typically includes the review of hard copies as well as “soft” copies of electronic media files in a variety of formats. It can get so complicated that attorneys sometimes feel they must conduct full discovery just to find out how to manage their discovery efforts.

There's even a nonprofit organization called the Litigation Support Vendor Association (www.lsva.com). Why? Well, there are more than 300 companies that claim to service some sector of the electronic data discovery (EDD) market. The list of vendors begins with 1stlegal Inc. and ends with ZyLAB Technologies. An inventory of all 339 companies in the space is available at Socha Consulting LLC.

According to the 2004 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey, EDD vendors' revenues rose from about $40 million in 1999 to about $430 million in 2003. Based on the popularity of the field ' as suggested by the sheer number of booths at the recent LegalTech 2005 trade show in New York ' those numbers are likely to be higher this year. [Editor's Note: American Lawyer Media, the parent company of Law Journal Newsletters, produces the LegalTech shows.]

EDD vendors generally provide document services in one or more of the following categories.

Selection

The legal team works with the full-service vendors to analyze information that may be necessary for production.

The full-service market leaders include, among others:

• Cricket Technologies, Reston, VA
• Daticon Inc., Norwich, CT
• Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc., Kirkland, WA
• Kroll Ontrack Inc., Eden Prairie, MN
• Lexis-Nexis Applied Discovery, Seattle
• Fios Inc., Portland, OR
• Stratify Inc., Mountain View, CA
• Attenex Corporation, Seattle
• IE Discovery Inc., Austin, TX
• InterLegis Inc., Dallas

Gathering

Documents are preserved and collected after selection.

Kroll Ontrack is well-known in this area (as well as in the full-service group), but Chicago-based Project Leadership Associates and Computer Forensics also provide these services.

Conversion

Documents are generally cleaned, coded, converted (usually to TIFF or PDF) and often reduced in size.

One of the leaders is this area is Phoenix, AZ-based SPI Litigation Direct LLC.

Others include:

• Planet Data Solutions, Elmsford, NY
• AA Scan Inc., Akron, OH
• codeMantra LLC, Plymouth Mtg., PA
• Cypher Coding Inc., Chicago

Restoration

Electronic information is restored from its existing electronic medium and prepared for use on an EDD platform, such as one provided by market leaders CaseShare Systems Inc., in Denver, and CaseCentral, in San Francisco.

Filtering

Sophisticated software allows the legal team to search electronic documents to find patterns and relationships in the data.

The leaders in this space are Stratify Inc. and Attenex Corp., but Los Gatos, CA-based InfoTame Corp. and Dallas-based Syngence LLC offer related services.

Delivery

The final set of discoverable material is produced and transferred into different formats, depending on the litigation requirements.

Large-document duplication services, such as Ikon Office Solutions Inc., tend to dominate this sector.

Also in this space are Washington, DC-based Access Litigation Support Services LLC, Pittsburgh-based Ditto Document Solutions and Copy Corps.

The purpose of the entire discovery process is generally to allow responsive documents to be used with software programs that provide litigation support, such as Dataflight Software's Concordance EX and Opticon, and Summation Blaze 2.5.

Your selection of a vendor may depend on the complexity of the material involved. The federal courts differentiate electronic discovery documents by their level of accessibility. The most accessible type of data is active, online data, which is information stored on computer hard drives. If you're dealing with the latter, you may need a more sophisticated vendor.

While conducting e-discovery and selecting vendors in the EDD market are daunting, EDD has not fundamentally altered the discovery process, experts say.

“e-Discovery is different than discovery of paper-based information, but it's still just part of the discovery process,” Chris May, CEO of IE Discovery, says. “Attorneys should not let the technical issues involved in e-discovery cause them to forgo the practice of reasonable discovery techniques.”

Conduct EDD Early And Often

According to May, successful firms bring in discovery support early on in the process to narrow the universe of possible discoverable documents. It's often the selection of that support that takes the time.

Firms should use vendors that have advanced technology, offer strong in-house capabilities, provide customization and process the work quickly, notes Kevin Carr, CEO of InterLegis. “The side with the best technology wins,” he says.

Also, because most discovery review is often done late at night and on weekends, responsiveness is essential, Carr adds.

“At InterLegis, for example, we provide an instant response any time of day at any time of the year,” says Carr. “An e-mail to [email protected] pages the entire team and a response is often provided to the client within minutes.”

While the field of discovery-support tools and vendors is crowded, there are probably only a few that suit your needs completely, and that could make the difference between winning and losing your case. Choose wisely.