Challenges To eDiscovery
 

What seems to be the biggest challenge to eDiscovery for Defendants?

From a defense counsel perspective, the key challenges to eDiscovery are cost and risk.

Cost:  The cost of the eDiscovery process is usually in direct proportion to the size of the population of potentially relevant documents. The bigger  the population, the more gigabytes of e-files for vendors to process and the more pages for counsel to review for relevance or privilege.

Risk: The primary reason discovery document populations tend to be so large is concern for spoliation claims by the opposing counsel.

How can we help defense counsel balance the challenges of cost and risk of “under preservation?

ESI OnDemand will create a data topology map of potentially relevant electronically stored information BEFORE it is collected. The topology map will provide valuable insights to defenses counsel such as: the volume of user created documents and email, by key custodian, within the litigation specific data range. The topology map can be printed to a pdf file format and taken by counsel to a Rule 26 Meet and Confer conference. It can also be used to reduce the size of the document population for vendor processing and attorney review because it provides the intelligence as to which custodian data or document types should be collected, preserved and processed or merely collected and preserved pending the outcome of discovery. ESI-OnDemand assists defenses counsel by striking the best balance of cost reduction and risk mitigation.  

What seems to be the biggest challenge to eDiscovery for Plaintiffs?

From a plaintiff counsel perspective, the key challenges to eDiscovery are resources and time.

Resources:  Plaintiff counsel normally does not have the expertise, specialized software and high powered computer system to process and analyze the large volumes of electronically stored information produced by medium and large sized organizations. Its not uncommon for a gigabyte of user files to render 70,000 - 100,000 pages of text and on average each key employee to have 1-2 gigabytes of combined stored user files on their email server, shared server and desktop computer.

Time: While time might be the friend of the defense counsel it is the foe of the plaintiff counsel seeking a quick resolution to a dispute and lacking a huge staff of associates and paralegals to review documents .

How can we assist plaintiff counsel to quickly process and understand eDiscovery?

ESI OnDemand will serve as your “in-house” litigation technology partners to provide experienced computer forensics and database experts; robust computer technology; and advanced tools for fast data analysis. We understand that plaintiff counsel is often engaged on a contingency basis and we are open to success fee billing arrangements.

To learn more about how we can help you address the challenge of eDiscovery click here.