Insourcing, International Due Diligence and Data-Culling

The movement toward more flexible technology is taking hold with both law firm and corporate clients globally.

For lawyers, this means it’s important to be able to explain the full e-discovery process to a less technologically sophisticated judge, or even opposing counsel. If lawyers feel as if they don’t understand how a technology works, it can be difficult for them to effectively lobby for its use.

One major trend in e-discovery management is insourcing. Law departments want to bring technology or people in-house, but they don’t want to pay for the infrastructure or other associated costs. Departments are looking for companies to augment their current technology or personnel. This potentially moves the risk from their side of the ledger, at the same time it enables scaling to meet changing needs and makes overall spend more predictable.

The biggest challenges in international M&A occur both at the very front end of the transaction, during the due diligence process, and post-merger when companies are going through the transition work to consolidate operational procedures. It is necessary to know what raises red flags in one country but might be permissible in another.

In terms of downstream e-discovery technology, there seems to be a movement to employ technology to the “left side” of the electronic discovery reference model (EDRM) spectrum, to significantly impact the volume of data before it reaches data review. This is where we are seeing an increase in spend, investment and attention.