Our new series: “Data! Data! Data!” — Cures for a General Counsel’s ESI Nightmares

In the latter part of the last decade — ok, the fall of 2009 — we completed what we call the trifecta:  full coverage of three of the premier electronically stored information (ESI) and e-discovery events for the litigation industry:  The Masters Conference (click here), the ACC Annual Meeting (click here), and the Georgetown Law Advanced E-Discovery Institute (click here).

As expressed at all of these events we are in “the perfect storm”: ever increasing data volumes; more litigation and government inquiries, and skyrocketing e-discovery costs. 

And if we learned only one thing about the explosion of ESI and corporate data it was this: Craig Ball, Jason R. Baron and Ralph Losey can scare the bejesus out of you.  These guys think in terms of exabytes … and beyond.  Although Jason and Ralph try to make it more palatable by doing it to the tune of Darude’s Sandstorm (click here).   And Craig Ball did assuage our concerns (a bit) by telling us that while we live in an infinite universe it is all manageable.

At all of these ESI events it was stressed — stress being the operative word — that in-house legal departments have been forced to cut their budgets just like their “sisters”, the law firms but with a greatly increased workload.  And the end of 2009 and the beginning of this year saw survey after survey tell us/show us that ESI and e-discovery requests would simply skyrocket.  As one of many examples, see the Enterprise Strategy Group study (click here).

So companies are looking to innovate their way out of the recession, strategically cutting costs, bringing services and processes in-house to gain more control, and doing more than just “quickly brandishing an umbrella looking for a place to seek shelter” quoting the  Enterprise Strategy study.

But as one memorable GC told us at the ACC Annual Meeting in Boston last year “the reality is we need to get control of our ESI — our data data data which seems to be everywhere!! — at the very beginning of our process.  Not just at litigation time”. 

A nightmare.  Or two … or three …. for general counsels everywhere.

And while it is impossible for a general counsel to isolate the effects of software from all the other efforts presumably made to rein in outside counsel and other spends, corporate law departments can control spending via technology.  And there are vendors and technology galore as ESI management, e-discovery, governance, compliance and risk are all melding into one pot.  And those great folks at Gartner have provided us with a nice summary of the e-discovery vendor landscape as we begin 2010 (click here).

So as LegalTech New York comes quickly upon us (click here) we are launching a new series whereby we will post detailed interviews we conducted over the last several months with the thought leaders in ESI management and e-discovery, with links to articles, blog posts and websites, focusing on ESI management and e-discovery for the corporate law department, and the law firm. The series will run up to and through LegalTech, and beyond. We have some 30+ interviews in the queue which will include:  Dean Larry Center, Bob Eisenberg and Nicole Steckman of Georgetown Law CLE; Tess Blair of Morgan Lewis; Jim Moore of Merrill Corporation; Ron Friedmann of Integreon; Deborah Baron of Autonomy; Tim Williams of Index Engines; Steve d’Alencon of CaseCentral; Nigel Murray of Trilantic; Virginia Henschel and Rob Robinson of Applied Discovery; Mary Mack of Fios; Adam Cohen of FTI Technology; Chris Dale of the eDisclosure Project, plus many, many more.

Our intent is to provide a background in finding potential cures for the ESI/data management nightmare as seen through the eyes of the major players in ESI management and e-discovery:  what technology is out there, who is out there, how do you sort through all the technology, procedures, best practices, etc.  Most of these folks will be presenting and/or exhibiting at LegalTech in a few weeks so we’ll also tell you where you can find them at the show. 

And a bit later in this series we will have interviews with Jason R. Baron, Ralph Losey and Craig Ball who will put all this tsunami of “data! data! data!” in perspective for us.

But we start off this series with some interviews with some extraordinary companies that have recently come onto the ESI/e-discovery scene.  First up:  an interview with Andy Wilson, co-founder of Logik.  For our full interview with Andy click here.

For all interviews and posts in this series click here.