Adam Rubinger is Head of eDiscovery Management at NightOwl Discovery. In this interview, I asked him to explain what NightOwl means by “eDiscovery management” and what it means for the client.

Until recently, Adam Rubinger says, clients’ management of eDiscovery was “sporadic”, meaning both that companies instructed a range of lawyers for different cases and that they had no consistent processes or practices covering eDiscovery; that meant, for example, that data might sit in multiple places, having been collected over and over again for different cases by different people.

NightOwl saw an opportunity to bringing more efficiencies, and reduced risk and cost, to eDiscovery by offering a cost-effective and cost-predictable subscription model. As with Spotify or Dropbox, clients have a defined capacity for volumes and review time for a given period and therefore know exactly what they will be spending. Adam Rubinger points out that, in most companies, the same custodians recur in case after case, and there are obvious efficiencies to be made from this fact alone.

I asked Adam Rubinger what the external lawyers think of this – they might, I said, think that they have been bypassed. It is right to say that some external lawyers feel threatened by the institution of ediscovery management at the hands of an eDiscovery provider, Adam says, but most see the benefits of a three way team – client, provider and outside counsel – who work together for the best result. NightOwl likes to get involved as early as possible in a case, Adam says, because if they know what the strategic course of the matter is, they can make things run more efficiently.

NightOwl is eloquent on the benefits of this kind of arrangement – see my interview from last year with NightOwl President Tom Palladino in which he makes the same point about the advantages of working directly for corporations.

Note also that in the course of my interview with him, Adam Rubinger casually mentions that NightOwl has been around for 25 years. That is a very long time in a relatively new market.

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