Managing the Challenge of Big Data e-Discovery Using the Cloud

A more immediate and targeted challenge arises when a business becomes involved in litigation or a government inquiry. When that happens, all that data becomes a gargantuan haystack that the business's lawyers must dig through in search of needles: potentially relevant documents, e-mails, text messages, spreadsheets, presentations and other electronically stored information (ESI).

This process of searching and reviewing ESI is typically the most expensive and time-consuming phase of any lawsuit or legal matter. For that reason, corporations and their counsel rely on technology to help them get through the process with greater efficiency and economy. As the data they have to deal with gets bigger, they are finding that legacy, locally installed e-discovery platforms are no longer able to match the advantages and capabilities of platforms based in the cloud.

Big Data Brings Bigger Challenges

There is a good reason that e-discovery can be expensive and time-consuming: it requires high degrees of precision and caution. In both federal and state courts, e-discovery violations carry steep legal and pecuniary sanctions. Litigants are obligated to be diligent and thorough in producing information within their possession that is relevant to the matter or that may lead to the discovery of relevant evidence. At the same time, they must be careful not to overproduce or to inadvertently produce anything that is protected by the attorney-client privilege.

This has a direct and immediate impact on a business's bottom line. Corporate legal expenses are growing larger every year, and e-discovery is typically the most expensive phase of any legal matter. Given this state of affairs, any savings a business can realize in e-discovery is significant.

The emergence of big data has ramped up the challenge of managing e-discovery. Just a few short decades ago, legal discovery was a paper-based process. Lawyers in litigation would pore over reams of hard-copy documents, extract those that were relevant to the case and produce them as sets of paper to their opponents.

Over time, as cases became more complex and involved larger and larger quantities of documents, lawyers began to turn to technology to help search and manage the documents. At first, they would scan hard-copy documents into image or PDF files to make them easier to use and share. Later, they began running them through OCR to make them searchable.

As lawyers made greater use of technology in discovery, various vendors introduced proprietary platforms to manage this process. Some of these original platforms, introduced more than two decades ago, are still in use. Although the software has been updated, the foundations have not. Just as they did two decades ago, these platforms continue to run as local installations, requiring their users to make major investments in hardware, software, IT staff and training.

Tackling Big Data through The Cloud

The problem with these legacy platforms is that they are not suited to the job of handling big data. Just as businesses and lawyers are increasingly turning to cloud-based systems for other functions, they are turning to the cloud for e-discovery. Probably the single greatest factor driving corporations and their law firms toward the cloud for e-discovery is cost savings. But cost is only one of several ways in which the cloud is better suited to e-discovery than an appliance.

In its 2012 report on cloud computing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; www.nist.gov) ' the federal agency tasked with promoting innovation and industrial competitiveness ' summed up the cloud's advantages: “Compared with traditional computing and software distribution solutions. SaaS clouds provide scalability and also shift significant burdens from consumers to providers, resulting in a number of opportunities for greater efficiency and, in some cases, performance.” See, “Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations.”'

The report goes on to describe key benefits of cloud computing, including up-front cost savings, a modest software footprint, centralized management and data, and the shifting of responsibility for managing the platform and upgrading the software to the provider.

The NIST report focused broadly on the advantages of cloud computing for the day-to-day operations of businesses and the federal government. But many of these same advantages hold true for businesses facing the specific challenges of legal matters and help explain why they now see the cloud as the better choice for an e-discovery platform.

Cloud Platforms Cost Less Than Local

As already noted, a key reason businesses and law firms are using cloud platforms for e-discovery is cost savings. As corporate legal departments seek to rein in legal spending, they are demanding greater accountability from their outside law firms and are becoming more directly engaged in selecting and purchasing e-discovery technologies and services.

The savings to a business from the cloud come in many forms. For one, the cloud provider hosts the data, so the users save by having no hardware to purchase and maintain. For another, the software runs in any standard Web browser, so the user is not required to purchase software, and upgrades occur seamlessly and invisibly. Cloud systems also require less IT staff than local appliances and have less system downtime.

No independent economic analysis has been conducted comparing the total costs of the cloud against an appliance for e-discovery. My company commissioned its own study, creating a hypothetical but typical e-discovery client and analyzing its total costs over a three-year period, using either a cloud or an in-house platform. Our analysis found a 36% savings in the cloud over the appliance.

Scalability and Elasticity

Another important advantage of the cloud for e-discovery is scalability. Large corporations are likely to be involved in multiple lawsuits ' sometimes simultaneously, sometimes serially. No two cases will be identical in their data demands. While one case might involve only a few gigabytes of data, the next could involve several terabytes. Even within a single case, the quantity of data can spike without warning.

For that reason, litigation in an era of big data demands a degree of elasticity that local systems cannot achieve ' at least not economically. With a local system, every ramp-up for a larger case would require new hardware, new site licenses and added staff. Every drop-off in activity would leave systems sitting idle, yet still taking up space, requiring maintenance and generating unnecessary costs.

With a cloud-based platform, you get an underlying grid of servers that is capable of expanding and contracting on demand to meet the changing needs of the case. This translates to cost savings, because users pay for greater bandwidth only when they need it. This also ensures that there need never be an interruption in workflow while new hardware is added to accommodate a spike.

Additional Advantages of The Cloud for Big Data

For businesses and law firms engaged in big data e-discovery, cloud-based systems offer a number of additional advantages. Among them:

• More power. Cases involving large quantities of data require significant computing power to search and analyze it all. In much the same way that cloud systems can scale to match storage demands, they can scale in processing power. The unbridled power of a cloud platform makes it much better suited than a local platform to the demands of complex litigation.
• Quick and easy data uploads. Data from corporate servers, remote custodians and third-party vendors can be easily loaded and processed into a cloud system. In addition, some systems offer the ability to search data automatically during loading for documents that are potentially confidential or privileged.
• Universal access. We live in a time when data is not only big, it is global. Complex litigation can involve lawyers, support staff and data custodians spread across disparate parts of the world. Cloud systems offer the advantage of easy access from anywhere, requiring only a browser and Internet access, making them ideal for global e-discovery.

Legal Ethics and'Cloud Computing

When cloud-based applications first began to establish a foothold within the legal field, some lawyers questioned whether they comported with legal-ethics rules that obligate lawyers to protect the confidentiality and security of client information. Fear over the lack of control of client information stored in the cloud kept many lawyers from embracing this technology.

Any such fear is now alleviated, thanks to a series of state and national legal-ethics rulings that have been unanimous in concluding that lawyers' use of cloud computing is consistent with their ethical and professional responsibilities. Even though these rulings give lawyers the go-ahead to use the cloud, they also make clear that lawyers remain ethically bound to exercise due diligence in selecting a cloud provider and ensuring that its terms of service and business operations meet acceptable standards.

Conclusion

In an age of big data, the cloud makes far more sense than a local appliance for managing e-discovery in complex cases. A key reason for this is the cost savings achieved through a cloud platform. But beyond cost savings, cloud platforms offer a number of advantages ' from power to scalability to universal access ' that make them uniquely well-suited to the demands of big data e-discovery.

John Tredennick is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Repository Systems. Formerly a nationally known trial lawyer, he was Editor-in-Chief of the best-selling book, Winning with Computers: Trial Practice in the Twenty-First Century.

The power of big data was dramatically illustrated in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. Within 24 hours, investigators had compiled more than 10 terabytes of data related to the incident. By meticulously combing through it all, they were able to identify suspects in relatively short order.

The business world, too, has come to see the value of big data. By leveraging and analyzing the data they create and collect, businesses are able to achieve valuable insights into both their own operations and the markets in which they compete.

But where business leaders see opportunity, business lawyers see challenges. On a broad level, the legal challenge of big data lies in its management, use and retention. Lawyers help their corporate clients address this broad challenge by helping them craft policies on information governance and compliance.

A more immediate and targeted challenge arises when a business becomes involved in litigation or a government inquiry. When that happens, all that data becomes a gargantuan haystack that the business's lawyers must dig through in search of needles: potentially relevant documents, e-mails, text messages, spreadsheets, presentations and other electronically stored information (ESI).

This process of searching and reviewing ESI is typically the most expensive and time-consuming phase of any lawsuit or legal matter. For that reason, corporations and their counsel rely on technology to help them get through the process with greater efficiency and economy. As the data they have to deal with gets bigger, they are finding that legacy, locally installed e-discovery platforms are no longer able to match the advantages and capabilities of platforms based in the cloud.

Big Data Brings Bigger Challenges

There is a good reason that e-discovery can be expensive and time-consuming: it requires high degrees of precision and caution. In both federal and state courts, e-discovery violations carry steep legal and pecuniary sanctions. Litigants are obligated to be diligent and thorough in producing information within their possession that is relevant to the matter or that may lead to the discovery of relevant evidence. At the same time, they must be careful not to overproduce or to inadvertently produce anything that is protected by the attorney-client privilege.

This has a direct and immediate impact on a business's bottom line. Corporate legal expenses are growing larger every year, and e-discovery is typically the most expensive phase of any legal matter. Given this state of affairs, any savings a business can realize in e-discovery is significant.

The emergence of big data has ramped up the challenge of managing e-discovery. Just a few short decades ago, legal discovery was a paper-based process. Lawyers in litigation would pore over reams of hard-copy documents, extract those that were relevant to the case and produce them as sets of paper to their opponents.

Over time, as cases became more complex and involved larger and larger quantities of documents, lawyers began to turn to technology to help search and manage the documents. At first, they would scan hard-copy documents into image or PDF files to make them easier to use and share. Later, they began running them through OCR to make them searchable.

As lawyers made greater use of technology in discovery, various vendors introduced proprietary platforms to manage this process. Some of these original platforms, introduced more than two decades ago, are still in use. Although the software has been updated, the foundations have not. Just as they did two decades ago, these platforms continue to run as local installations, requiring their users to make major investments in hardware, software, IT staff and training.

Tackling Big Data through The Cloud

The problem with these legacy platforms is that they are not suited to the job of handling big data. Just as businesses and lawyers are increasingly turning to cloud-based systems for other functions, they are turning to the cloud for e-discovery. Probably the single greatest factor driving corporations and their law firms toward the cloud for e-discovery is cost savings. But cost is only one of several ways in which the cloud is better suited to e-discovery than an appliance.

In its 2012 report on cloud computing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; www.nist.gov) ' the federal agency tasked with promoting innovation and industrial competitiveness ' summed up the cloud's advantages: “Compared with traditional computing and software distribution solutions. SaaS clouds provide scalability and also shift significant burdens from consumers to providers, resulting in a number of opportunities for greater efficiency and, in some cases, performance.” See, “Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations.”'

The report goes on to describe key benefits of cloud computing, including up-front cost savings, a modest software footprint, centralized management and data, and the shifting of responsibility for managing the platform and upgrading the software to the provider.

The NIST report focused broadly on the advantages of cloud computing for the day-to-day operations of businesses and the federal government. But many of these same advantages hold true for businesses facing the specific challenges of legal matters and help explain why they now see the cloud as the better choice for an e-discovery platform.

Cloud Platforms Cost Less Than Local

As already noted, a key reason businesses and law firms are using cloud platforms for e-discovery is cost savings. As corporate legal departments seek to rein in legal spending, they are demanding greater accountability from their outside law firms and are becoming more directly engaged in selecting and purchasing e-discovery technologies and services.

The savings to a business from the cloud come in many forms. For one, the cloud provider hosts the data, so the users save by having no hardware to purchase and maintain. For another, the software runs in any standard Web browser, so the user is not required to purchase software, and upgrades occur seamlessly and invisibly. Cloud systems also require less IT staff than local appliances and have less system downtime.

No independent economic analysis has been conducted comparing the total costs of the cloud against an appliance for e-discovery. My company commissioned its own study, creating a hypothetical but typical e-discovery client and analyzing its total costs over a three-year period, using either a cloud or an in-house platform. Our analysis found a 36% savings in the cloud over the appliance.

Scalability and Elasticity

Another important advantage of the cloud for e-discovery is scalability. Large corporations are likely to be involved in multiple lawsuits ' sometimes simultaneously, sometimes serially. No two cases will be identical in their data demands. While one case might involve only a few gigabytes of data, the next could involve several terabytes. Even within a single case, the quantity of data can spike without warning.

For that reason, litigation in an era of big data demands a degree of elasticity that local systems cannot achieve ' at least not economically. With a local system, every ramp-up for a larger case would require new hardware, new site licenses and added staff. Every drop-off in activity would leave systems sitting idle, yet still taking up space, requiring maintenance and generating unnecessary costs.

With a cloud-based platform, you get an underlying grid of servers that is capable of expanding and contracting on demand to meet the changing needs of the case. This translates to cost savings, because users pay for greater bandwidth only when they need it. This also ensures that there need never be an interruption in workflow while new hardware is added to accommodate a spike.

Additional Advantages of The Cloud for Big Data

For businesses and law firms engaged in big data e-discovery, cloud-based systems offer a number of additional advantages. Among them:

• More power. Cases involving large quantities of data require significant computing power to search and analyze it all. In much the same way that cloud systems can scale to match storage demands, they can scale in processing power. The unbridled power of a cloud platform makes it much better suited than a local platform to the demands of complex litigation.
• Quick and easy data uploads. Data from corporate servers, remote custodians and third-party vendors can be easily loaded and processed into a cloud system. In addition, some systems offer the ability to search data automatically during loading for documents that are potentially confidential or privileged.
• Universal access. We live in a time when data is not only big, it is global. Complex litigation can involve lawyers, support staff and data custodians spread across disparate parts of the world. Cloud systems offer the advantage of easy access from anywhere, requiring only a browser and Internet access, making them ideal for global e-discovery.

Legal Ethics and'Cloud Computing

When cloud-based applications first began to establish a foothold within the legal field, some lawyers questioned whether they comported with legal-ethics rules that obligate lawyers to protect the confidentiality and security of client information. Fear over the lack of control of client information stored in the cloud kept many lawyers from embracing this technology.

Any such fear is now alleviated, thanks to a series of state and national legal-ethics rulings that have been unanimous in concluding that lawyers' use of cloud computing is consistent with their ethical and professional responsibilities. Even though these rulings give lawyers the go-ahead to use the cloud, they also make clear that lawyers remain ethically bound to exercise due diligence in selecting a cloud provider and ensuring that its terms of service and business operations meet acceptable standards.

Conclusion

In an age of big data, the cloud makes far more sense than a local appliance for managing e-discovery in complex cases. A key reason for this is the cost savings achieved through a cloud platform. But beyond cost savings, cloud platforms offer a number of advantages ' from power to scalability to universal access ' that make them uniquely well-suited to the demands of big data e-discovery.

John Tredennick is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Repository Systems. Formerly a nationally known trial lawyer, he was Editor-in-Chief of the best-selling book, Winning with Computers: Trial Practice in the Twenty-First Century.