Speeding Up eDiscovery

I ran across some good points by Kevin Carr of ALSP on accelerating the eDiscovery review process. He suggests that there are four major factors to success: technology, reporting, processes and people. I agree but as an industry analyst I am primarily concerned with the technologyside of eDiscovery, with occasional forays into related issues.

My take on what you really need in eDiscovery technology:

Data Mapping -- I have written about this before in "Mapping: The Basis of Information Management" . Data mapping ferrets out data throughout the storage infrastructure. It should be dynamically updated, searchable and actionable. Examples of eDiscovery usage include collection (obviously) and an efficient way to carry out early case assessment.

Visual Analytics -- Visual analytics are just one tool in the review cycle but it's an important one for human reviewers. These screens enable teams to quickly grasp potentially relevant data and relationships, allowing them to make sense of presented information without diving down one too many rabbit holes. Visual analytics is primarily a tool for ECA although it can be used as a component of a full-blown review and analysis platform as well.

Culling the dataset -- Reducing the size of the collected dataset before processing is a widely accepted procedure. Traditional de-duplication is the big daddy process but so is near de-dup. Prioritized search results that let reviewers dump low-relevance results are also useful. (Caveat: be sure to pick a technology that reports what you dumped and why you dumped it.)

E-mail threading and analysis - This should probably go without saying but I said it anyway. You need an analysis technology that threads discussions at the very least.

Advanced search -- I was startled to find out that even large companies are still using bare-bones search technologies for eDiscovery. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised but Google-like interfaces are hopelessly inadequate for strong eDiscovery searches. You need search that does rich metadata, concept analysis and content searching at the least.

Full-blown review and analysis -- Law firms have been using these for years. The platform should ideally support tagging, multiple teams, multi-matter management, workflow management, and the ability to reuse work products. Many of these products are reaching farther back into the eDiscovery workflow to accomplish ECA, but you definitely need them post-processing.

Native Review/Native Redactions -- The Production and Presentation part of the eDiscovery workflow doesn't get as much attention as some other stages but they strongly impact security and agreements made at the meet-and-confer. The features I like to see include 1) security functions to control access and output, 2) digital redaction for security and efficiency, and 3) the ability to support a variety of output formats. See "Production Pain Points" for more on this.

You cannot buy a single technology that accomplishes all these things but you can and should buy technology that integrates smoothly across the entire workflow. You also have the option of purchasing the technology and doing it yourself (useful when you have a good IT organization and corporate Legal in place) or contracting with an eDiscovery service provider to do it for you. Takeaway point: you have options. The key is to use them.