One should, strictly, read a book before reviewing it, but when I sat down to write about Andrew Haslam’s eDisclosure Systems Buyers Guide 2021, I had no aspirations to read it first. It has 496 pages, and is not, in any event, a publication designed for reading from virtual cover to cover. It is, as its title implies, a guide, and the purpose of a guide – to a place, say – is to allow you to find easily the sections which matter to you while perhaps seducing you to parts which were not part of your original plan.

As is turns out, I don’t really need to review it, because that has been comprehensively achieved , first by Rob Robinson of  Complex Discovery (on whose website the Buyers Guide sits) and then by Doug Austin on the IPRO eDiscovery Today site.

Andrew Haslam is now UK eDisclosure Project Manager for Squire Patton Boggs, who enticed him into their employment some time back to make use of his very deep and broad knowledge of the software and providers in the eDisclosure market. He had already had years of experience of this when I first met him, and was skilled at devising strategies, specifying  systems, setting them up, and managing their use. By happy chance, these were the very things I emphatically did not want to do (I have been known to include in contracts an express term that my role would have nothing to do with systems specification or project management), and we spent many years meeting at events without aspiring to each other’s work. He knows his stuff.

He also knows his market, not just in the sense required of anyone who writes a market guide, but also in the sense that he knows how to pitch his advice and suggestions in a way which is helpful to his audience. As the IPRO article puts it:

the target audience for the Guide are those individuals who understand they have a requirement, but do not know how to proceed with the next steps.

The Complex Discovery introduction adds:

the guide provides a complete and credible resource for legal and IT professionals seeking to understand and apply eDisclosure (eDiscovery) concepts, processes, techniques, and tools.

The Complex Discovery site provides a one-click link to the guide.

My picture, incidentally, show Andrew Haslam moderating a Hot Topics panel discussion in Prague in 2014. Andrew’s range is wide – he is one of participants in a panel at Relativity Fest London on 19 May with the title Legal and Technical Perspectives on Data Privacy and Data Protection.

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