A Litigation Support Wish List for General Counsel

Based on interviews with law department administrators and e-discovery managers, there is increasing acceptance of advanced technologies, such as predictive coding, for e-discovery. Those involved with the process are seeking ways to address “big data,” and improvements in software deployment, training and workflows. They want better “Bring Your Own Device” policies because of the difficulty of collecting data from numerous sources and devices.

Litigation support teams are looking for a repeatable collection method and elimination of the common problem of over-collecting. Many confirmed that companies often collect too much data because they are concerned about risk of failing to collect, or because they don’t know how to reduce volumes. As a solution, they want wider adoption of predictive coding, concept search and other analytics.

One major complaint regarding the early case assessment stage is that much of the software requires IT support, making the legal team dependent upon IT’s availability. Respondents asked for more attention to training, in order to provide autonomy. Better management of email archiving to avoid duplicate data could also improve efficiency.

Many companies are handling review in-house only for small investigative matters, while playing a supervisory role in larger matters. Overall, e-discovery managers want better control of the process, simpler approaches to collecting, processing and reviewing data, and budget predictability. Chief legal officers who take note of these requests are likely to see significant progress toward e-discovery budget transparency.