Bringing Sanity to E-Discovery in Five Steps

E-discovery is becoming increasingly time consuming and expensive. Many in the legal profession think that technology can provide the solution, that by using technology to conduct a tedious and labor-intensive part of the process, predictive coding, they can eliminate a major component of discovery costs. But predictive coding is just one of many technology tools that should be considered, depending on the type of case, deadlines, cost structure, and types of data at issue.

Begin by gathering the facts from key custodians and data sources. To make informed case strategy decisions, relevant data needs to be collected, culled and indexed, as a way to garner insights from various perspectives. At that point you can assess the costs and potential business disruption of litigation, the potential for the wrong kind of publicity, and the likelihood that sensitive information will be disclosed. With this knowledge, you can decide to file, settle or vigorously defend.

To be litigation-ready, you need an information governance plan. Information governance is about developing a strategy and then implementing processes to identify, value, store and dispose of data.

The speed and precision with which legal practitioners access information can have a huge impact. Technologies can provide insight into the content and value of data located in common repositories like file shares, hard drives, legacy email archive systems, cloud repositories, email servers and desktops. These technologies can help respond effectively to discovery and prevail in, or avoid, future litigation.