Q&A on E-Discovery

The increased use of technology in the workplace has added to the complexity of e-discovery. Relevant, discoverable information may be on a computer, on a mobile device or in the cloud. Identifying, finding and preserving all of that information has made e-discovery significantly more complex. Mobile device companies are innovating at breakneck pace. Significant changes to operating systems are commonplace. New e-discovery tools are constantly being developed and tested to deal with these technologies.

Technology tools and their adoption has become much greater, particularly in the last two years. At the same time, the volume of data that companies are creating on annual basis continues to skyrocket, so innovation and the size of the problem are competing with one another. Failing to manage and destroy unneeded data can lead to overwhelming e-discovery costs if a future discovery request puts that date range in the scope of discovery. We are seeing fewer massive-scale human document reviews than before. In particular, “TAR2.0,” or categorization-based review workflows are lowering the barrier to entry for integrating Technology Assisted Review (TAR) into the process.

Companies need to manage their data archives. One thing to weigh is budgeting. Litigation is non-discretionary spending, while information governance and records retention are generally discretionary. Sometimes these discrete budgets lead companies to make penny wise, pound foolish, long-term decisions.