This is the third in a series of interviews which I did with Paul Mankoo, CEO of Inventus, at Legaltech in New York.

The subject of this short segment is the changes in the way organisations are spending money on eDiscovery and related services. Historically, most of this money went to lawyers. Now, although the spending is up, lawyers are getting less of it. Where, I asked Paul Mankoo, is the money going?

Paul Mankoo said that organisations continue to take increasing control of the discovery process. They are doing more of it themselves as well as exerting more control over those to whom they delegate work.

The increasing outlay is going partly on the provision of in-house services and partly on working with providers who are not law firms. The statistics one sees about increased spending take account of what has been spent internally and what is going to other providers.

It is implicit in this that there must necessarily be good communication between the participants in a project. Where clients once (usually) passed the problem to the lawyers, they now expect to work closely with those engaged on projects for them.

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