DiscoveryMining

Looking back at LegalTech New York , two things impressed me:

1. Every company seemed to be touting E-Discovery capabilities. The market noise, instead of reducing as the market matures, seems to be increasing. This is harmful to the customer who is trying to make an informed decision for an important matter. We vendors need to facilitate apples-to-apples comparisons, not obfuscate them.
2. The EDRM model (which is a little like saying ATM machine) graphic has been widely picked up by the vendor and analyst community and used to start to sort out the noise and claims of the vendors.

I support the use of the EDRM graphic.





I think it starts to define different disciplines in the market. For instance, Discovery Mining offers data processing, hosted online review and production. We periodically manage collection through third parties, conversion of paper into electronic images, but we never actually “leave the building” or touch paper – incoming or outgoing. Forrester Research has referred to us as a “pure play”.

At the next conference, I’d like to see a requirement that vendors identify which services they offer using the EDRM graphic. Discovery Mining’s graphic would look like this:




Another big distinction that I am starting to draw is where the service or software is deployed and to whom it is sold.

Looking again at the EDRM graphic, I see that, generally speaking, stuff left of my inserted line – the “firewall line” is sold to the corporation, not the law firm and often to the CIO, not the GC. Although all touted as E-Discovery tools, I see very different pricing models, constituencies, uses and core competencies.



 




By way of this blog, I am suggesting that we can help all of our customers by pushing a new definition:

PRE-DISCOVERY: The preparation, collection, culling and early case assessment carried out within the firewall prior to a full, distributed law firm review of electronic documents.

	Pre-Discovery	E-Discovery
Where Conducted	Inside the firewall, at the corporation	Outside the Firewall, hosted online, or at the law firm
Performed by	In-house counsel or IT, usually a few people	Outside counsel or temporary attorneys, often many reviewers
Sold to	The Corporation: CIO, CTO, GC	The Law Firm: Partner, Lit Support Professional and outside GC
Looking for	The scope of the potentially responsive documents, any very good news or very bad news documents	Privilege, responsiveness, case strategy

It is my opinion that if we vendors work together on a few key words and explanations, like PRE-DISCOVERY, all of our various strengths would come to light, while at the same time allowing marketplace confusion to dissipate. What’s good for the clients is good for the vendors.