Angela Bunting is Director of eDiscovery Products and Solutions at Nuix.
When I interviewed her last September, she had just written a paper called Putting perspective back into eDiscovery whose theme was the benefit of getting on top of the data, and thence the facts, at the earliest possible stage in a case or an investigation.
Angela Bunting says that it is no good waiting until the discovery process is over before starting to acquire the facts. It is necessary to make decisions, both strategic and tactical, right at the start, and the lawyer who does have control of the facts is in a better position (obviously) than the one who does not. This involves the use of appropriate technology right at the beginning.
The younger generation of lawyers is, perhaps inevitably, better at this than the older one, because they are more used to the idea of managing information electronically. That technical advantage is likely to become a tactical one.