eDiscovery and litigation support are largely reactive disciplines, providing firefighting solutions to problems which have been triggered by a dispute or by alleged non-compliance with regulatory duties. We are beginning to see a focus on information governance, part of which is designed to anticipate and minimise potential eDiscovery problems (I say “part” because information governance has wider ambitions than this).

In an interesting move, international litigation support provider UBIC has announced that it is setting up a research and development centre to focus on the application of advanced technology to the anticipation and reduction of business risks. The aim is to bring together the disciplines of behavioural science and information science to provide companies with solutions to anticipate, prevent and respond to risk.

The new centre will be established in Tokyo and is due to begin operations in March 2013.

There is a press release with more details here.