Taking Control of the e-discovery process

spoliation of the original messages, their contents and their metadata.

“Before the FRCP rule changed,” Childress says, “attorneys relied a lot on consultants and vendors. Now they want to know more about the e-discovery process and take control.” In June, Wave Software released a new version of Trident that handles other file formats in addition to e-mail.

Leveraging search for success

Vascoe Valdes was founded three years ago, specifically to handle very complex business transactions and resolve business disputes globally. Although some law firms have been slow to use technology in support of their activities, Vascoe Valdes took the opposite approach, seeking to leverage technology from the outset. Its strategy has been to solve each problem “exactly one time,” says Jeffre Vascoe, managing partner. For help with knowledge management, e-discovery searching and complex case management, Vascoe Valdes selected ISYS Search Software.

Vascoe considers ISYS to be the best search product available. “The most important thing for us to know is that we are looking at the entire result set,” he emphasizes, “and that we have missed nothing.” Vascoe values the ability of ISYS to search on key words, phonetics, concepts, multiple languages and multiple file formats including internal and external information sources.

“Nearly every result we get is responsive to the query and relevant to the matter,” he maintains. After all the responsive files are located, they are indexed and organized for the opposing counsel to review. “We like being able to produce our results very quickly and in an organized way,” Vascoe says, “because it helps our clients reach resolution sooner.”

The firm also uses ISYS to review information received from its own discovery requests. “When we are searching for information received from others, we use ISYS to develop concept trees from our case outline,” Vascoe explains. Concept trees are visual, hierarchical taxonomies of information contained in the ISYS index.

In one contract/fraud case, Vascoe Valdes received more than 100,000 pages of documents. “We created concept trees that clarified issues such as which actions were taken by what person,” says Vascoe. “Within two days of receiving those documents, we could write meaningful briefs based on that discovery without having to review the documents manually, and with the confidence that we were incorporating the necessary information. The discovery was carried out quickly, and it substantially bolstered our case, which helped us achieve a successful conclusion.”

ISYS has been used in the legal industry for nearly 20 years, so it is a familiar software tool in that environment. “We have worked with legal professionals, who have in turn shaped the product,” says Dave Haucke, VP of marketing at ISYS. However, he stresses that ISYS is not designed to be a standalone e-discovery product; rather, it complements other solutions as part of the overall e-discovery process.

The e-discovery market

Dozens of products and services are available for e-discovery, and the market for those products is growing rapidly. Forrester predicts that e-discovery technology spending will grow from $1.4 billion in 2006 to more than $4.8 billion in 2011. That figure does not include revenue for services or consulting. Forrester also believes that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) amendments will generate demand for e-discovery solutions over the near term, but that long-term growth in e-discovery will be driven by the need to make it a part of an overall retention management strategy.

Among the many product offerings for e-discovery are:

• The newly released Concordance 2007 litigation management solution from LexisNexis (lexisnexis.com), which incorporates improved search technology and integration with LexisNexis Total Litigator.
• Attenex Patterns, an e-discovery software suite from Attenex that integrates data processing, native file document review and reporting tools.
• Onsite3 offers products and services for e-discovery, including processing, review and production.
• DigiScope from Lucid8, e-discovery specifically for Microsoft Exchange.

Larger companies are acquiring the pieces they need to move toward an end-to-end solution. The acquisition of Image Capture Engineering (imagecap.com) by LexisNexis is a good example. Image Capture’s LAW 5.0 Pre-Discovery extracts information for use with software such as Concordance 2007.