“You can’t afford the truth!” — Day 1 of the International Litigation Support Leaders Conference

That was the rallying cry of Ralph Losey and many of the speakers at ILSLC yesterday.   Said Losey “When people start talking about e-discovery production burdens I always think of the famous line of Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men, where he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth!’  In e-discovery today in my opinion the line goes, ‘You can’t afford the truth’  at least not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It costs too much. So you’ve got to figure out how much of the truth can you afford to get. We have got to educate the courts and ourselves and opposing counsel that it is impossible in today’s world to get all relevant e-mails on any issue. You’re only going to get a certain amount of them that is acceptable to proceed forward, one of the prime criteria of which is what does it cost.”

And that nails it:  the fundamental problem facing the legal profession today is the search for truth and justice in a digital world.  A world where the complexity and volume of electronic information is overwhelming.

And as the keynote speaker, Craig Ball, said in the opening kick-off presentation it is getting worse:  “We are at the point that making a distinction between discovery and e-discovery is  superfluous:  e-discovery is discovery!   Over 95% of our words are on magnetic media.”

By 2011, the amount of electronic data created and stored will grow to 10 times the 180 exabytes that existed in 2006, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of almost 60%.   By 2011, there will be 1,800 exabytes of electronic data in existence, or 1.8 zettabytes (an exabyte is equal to 1 billion gigabytes).   In fact, the number of bits stored already exceeds the estimated number of stars in the universe according to the International Data Group (IDC) which estimates this sort of stuff.

As Craig Ball detailed, the diversity of the digital data that’s producing this massive growth runs the gamut, from 6GB movies on DVD to 128-bit signals from RFID tags.   Less than half of the digital data being created by individuals can be accounted for by user activities, such as photos, phone calls and e-mails.  The majority of the data is made up by what is called digital “shadows” — including surveillance photos, Web search histories, financial transaction journals and mailing lists, and stuff  stored on disks like video cameras records and closed-circuit TVs and digital surveillance cameras.

Also, much of the data being created by consumers outside of a company’s four walls will still force that company to protect the data.  At some point in the life of every file, or bit or packet, 85% of that information somewhere goes through a corporate computer, Web site, network or asset.   The corporation at that point in time has responsibility for that information. 

The day ended with a great dinner (and some rather raucous comedians) which was highlighed by the Betsey Ann Reynolds Awards for Excellence in Litigation Support.   The winners were “stars” in the e-discovery world:

Corporate:  Joanne Lane,  Director of eDiscovery Strategy and Litigation Support at MetLife

Law firm:  Mary Pat Poteet,  Director of Litigation Support for DLA Piper 

Industry:  George Socha,  President of Socha Consulting LLC and creator of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model which is the lodestar of the e-discovery universe

We’ll have a further report tonight and over the weekend and we’ll detail our converations with vendors, speakers and other contacts we made regarding jobs for contract attorneys in e-discovery collection/processing/review and e-discovery analysis and production.

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