Epiq Systems brought out Epiq Portal 2.0 as LegalTech began. There is a lot of noise around then, however, and I generally prefer to let the dust settle before picking up on announcements. The press release is here.

The growth in data under management for eDiscovery purposes (and Epiq is reporting increased caseloads) brings with it an increasing reporting obligation on the part of those responsible for discovery exercises. It is not just that there are more cases: deadlines, whether imposed by court or regulator or expected by the client, require administrators and lawyers to know where they have got to on each case, not least so that exceptions and delays can be flagged and resources diverted to where they are most needed.

We are going to need this kind of management, and particularly the reporting which comes with it, as England & Wales moves into a new age of court-led case management. The old saying about not being able to manage what you can’t measure is not so much a business mantra as a statement of the obvious, and lawyers who can go into a CMC armed with this kind of information are better able to manage expectations and justify proposed timelines and extensions.

That is helpful anyway, whatever your jurisdiction and whatever the context – it can never hurt to be able to give a regulator sensible predictions about volumes and timelines.