Author Archives: Chris Dale

We can, I hope, take it for granted that most lawyers involved in litigation and regulatory requests have got their minds round email, loose files like word documents and spreadsheets and the other more obvious discoverable material – “obvious” because they have obvious parallels in the paper world. Continue reading →

ZyLABI have taken part in any number of data collection and privacy panels at which the US indifference to privacy protection has been given as a norm. It is always qualified, however, by references to certain specific areas including HIPAA. I have not had the curiosity until now to look this up and see that this is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 1996 – I was aware that it was to do with medical information, but knew no more than that. Continue reading →

One of the new releases at ILTA was Hypergraph from Recommind, a visualisation tool designed to make it easier to identify relevant information from the mass. Continue reading →

UBIC is well known as a provider of eDiscovery software with particular emphasis on the ability to handle the challenges of dealing with CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) electronic documents. Continue reading →

The title of this live Nuix webinar, taking place tomorrow, 4 September at 4.00pm ET, is What’s new in Nuix 5? and self-explanatory. Continue reading →

FTI TechnologyI have already written about the addition of predictive coding to FTI Technology’s Ringtail 8. I come back to it partly because I had a closer look at it at ILTA and spoke to a longtime Ringtail user who was excited about it, and partly because of a forthcoming webinar. Continue reading →

Nuix has launched eDiscovery 5 which attracted much attention at ILTA, together with its new web application Director, which automates eDiscovery of workflows in the hands of eDiscovery experts, analysts and technicians, investigators and lawyers. Nuix eDiscovery 5 can be used either … Continue reading →

The Ministry of Justice is seeking a solicitor member and a lay advice public consumer affairs member for the Civil Procedure Rule Committee. Continue reading →

For the first time in many years, I will not be at the Masters Conference for Legal Professionals, to be held in Washington D.C. from Wednesday 18 September to 19 September. Continue reading →

The partnership between Guidance Software and Magnet Forensics has resulted in a new integration module available on EnCase App Central. Evidence uncovered by Internet Evidence Finder (IEF) can be brought directly into EnCase Forensic so that all evidence for a single case can be examined, searched and analysed in one place. Continue reading →

For reasons which I will expand on in due course, I am increasingly interested in what is happening in Canada in respect of eDiscovery and cybersecurity. Continue reading →

The Xerox Litigation Services blog, Xerox eDiscovery Talk, continues to provide thoughtful and useful posts aimed at those in corporate and law firms who face eDiscovery challenges. The blog complements a wide range of eDiscovery / eDisclosure tools and services offered by Xerox Litigation Services and Lateral Data which, for many companies and law firms, offer the answer to the problem raised in the article to which my heading refers. Continue reading →

encaseGuidance Software is running a three-part series on eDiscovery covering fundamental points and best practices. Its part one was about legal holds and preservation. Part two, taking place on Tuesday 27th August at 11.00am PDT is about identification, collection and processing. Continue reading →

There was a time when most companies involved in eDiscovery / eDisclosure focused on their own niche strengths, leaving other components of the EDRM (the Electronic Discovery Reference Model) to other companies with the relevant specialist skills. Many then spread their portfolios to left and right of the original starting positions with the aim, much valued by many clients, of keeping responsibility for the process and for the budgets in one hand – or, put more colloquially, having “one butt to kick”. Continue reading →

I wrote recently about the use by the British Army’s Royal Military Police of AccessData’s investigative tools, which allow data of all kinds to be captured, processed, analysed and reviewed very much faster than hitherto. Continue reading →

eDiscovery software provider UBIC, which specialises in Asian language electronic discovery, last week celebrated its admission to NASDAQ when its Chairman and CEO Masahiro Morimoto rang the NASDAQ Closing Bell to mark the end of the trading day. NASDAQ Vice President David Wicks noted that UBIC is the first Japanese company to be listed on NASDAQ since 1999. Continue reading →

Thomson Reuters has announced the launch of Case Logistix 6.0, the latest version of its scalable document review, analysis and production software platform. The announcement is here and the main CaseLogistix product page is here. Continue reading →

Deborah Baron was one of the first people I met when I first started getting involved in US discovery. We did panels together years ago at LegalTech, had long conversations about eDiscovery at dead of night because I was in England and she was in San Francisco, and spent time in bars and restaurants in places as far apart as New York and Barcelona. Continue reading →

I have referred before to a paper which I wrote for Equivio called Equivio Themes: shifting the eDiscovery focus back to lawyers looking for evidence. It has now been published on the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel site. The immediate context is Equivio Themes, an interesting new software application (part of Equivio Zoom) designed to help lawyers quickly pick out the important themes (thus the name) from large document collections. The thrust of the paper, however, is the words “lawyers looking for evidence” which appears in its title. Continue reading →

I wrote recently about the admission of eDiscovery company UBIC to the NASDAQ market and about the ringing of the closing bell at NASDAQ on 5 August. I wanted to find out more about the background to the company and about its plans for the money raised on the flotation, and spoke to Mr Masahiro Morimoto, UBIC’s founder and CEO and to Mr. Naritomo Ikeue, UBIC’s President and COO. Continue reading →

There is a webinar today, 13 August, at 1:00pm Central moderated by George Socha and Tom Gelbmann of EDRM Apersee and sponsored by AccessData. Technology assisted review, or predictive coding, is one of the components in AccessData’s new Summation 5.0, along with a full range of eDiscovery functionality from collection and culling with FTK, through to review. Continue reading →

eDiscovery and information management company ZyLAB has produced a white paper which emphasises the importance of being able to find PII or personally identifiable information. It is called Privacy and Data Protection: it all starts with locating PII, and you can find it, with other useful papers from ZyLAB, here. Continue reading →

Having recently done a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) webinar myself, I am up to date with the complications which arise for corporations with the growing trend towards Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The conflict between an individual’s wish to use devices and applications with which they are familiar, and the security and eDiscovery implications of that, is one which organisations of all sizes are grappling with. Many more, one suspects, are simply ignoring the problem or not recognising it as such. Continue reading →

Nuix is now known as a provider of eDiscovery and information governance solutions used by major companies and law firms as well as by regulators, particularly financial regulators. Its roots, however, lay in the development of a forensic collections tool, and it has not neglected those roots as it expanded into other and wider things. Nuix has now appointed a Director of Forensic Solutions. Continue reading →

AccessData has continued to maintain its older versions of its eDiscovery tool Summation, acquired by so many companies and firms over many years, whilst developing its new integrated eDiscovery platform built around its FTK forensics tools and the new Summation 5.0. Continue reading →

kCura has released Relativity Binders, which allows users to organise, annotate and prepare such documents from anywhere at any time. Like everybody else, the decision-making lawyers engaged in discovery / disclosure are not at their desks as they used to be, and need to be able to access eDiscovery data, just as they access email, accounts and other office resources, from wherever they happen to be. Continue reading →

Business consulting services group Huron Consulting Group has announced that Robert Rowe is to lead the Huron Legal practice. Mr Rowe was previously a managing director and leader of Huron Legal’s Discovery services business. Robert Rowe’s background includes 20 years experience in providing eDiscovery solutions and project management for legal matters to large companies and law firms in the US and internationally. Continue reading →

There is an article in the current edition of eForensics Magazine called How KPMG uses EnCase Tools to solve client’s E-Discovery challenges in Canada. It is written by Dominic Jaar of KPMG Canada who is both technically accomplished and one of the best explainers in the business – technical skill and the ability to articulate functions and benefits do not necessarily live in the same hands. Continue reading →

FTI’s Ringtail 8 has been through a complete overhaul in the last couple of years, making it one of the most visually attractive applications on the market as well as one with the power and functionality which legal departments demand. Much of FTI’s focus has been on developing easily-navigated visual representations of the data to make it easy for decision-making lawyers to see and therefore to gain control of their data. The latest development brings predictive coding (which FTI has long offered as a service to its clients) into Ringtail 8. Continue reading →

One of the most respected analysts and commentators on eDiscovery is US-based eDJ Group which embraces news and commentary on the eDiscovery Journal, plus analysis, consultancy, strategic consulting and a wide range of other services covering the eDiscovery and information governance. Continue reading →

kCura’s annual event, Relativity Fest, is due to take place in Chicago between 6 and 8 October. Reports from previous events suggest that Relativity Fest has something for everyone, and not just those who are existing or potential Relativity customers. Continue reading →

I wrote recently about the admission of eDiscovery solutions and services provider UBIC to the NASDAQ Global Market on 16 May. Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Mr Masahiro Morimoto desribed this as “another significant milestone in [UBIC’s] strategy to expand our global brand awareness and help take UBIC to the next level of growth and international expansion”. Continue reading →

As I have mentioned before, Equivio is running a series of webinars with the overarching title Predictive Coding Minus the Hype. One of those present at an earlier one commented expressly on the absence of self-promotion and on the practical value of the webinar. Continue reading →

eDiscovery software provider iCONECT has added Russian language support to the interface of its attractive document review platform XERA. Continue reading →

I have been away and may have missed several webinar announcements. There is just time to tip you off about a webinar taking place today at 11 AM PDT at which Guidance Software will talk about Litigation Holds and Preservation. Continue reading →

The write-up for this FTI Technology webinar, called eDiscovery for Second Requests: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, and which takes place on 31 July at 11am PDT / 2pm ET, begins by saying “Second Requests offer an advanced course in e-discovery – everything is a bit harder and faster, and legal teams need to be better and stronger to effectively handle the matter. Deadlines are shorter, data volumes are higher, and for added pressure, regulators and executive boards are often keeping close tabs on progress.”. Continue reading →

Epiq Systems is giving a two-part webcast about cross-border data transfers and global privacy regulations, with the first one on 30 July (that is, tomorrow). The primary (though not the only) context is eDiscovery demands, whether for litigation or for regulation. Continue reading →

The Masters Conference does more than the big annual event in Washington for which it is best known. Since Robert Childress took up the post of CEO last year, it is expanding the range and number of events around the US. Continue reading →

Equivio has published a White Paper which I wrote for them on the Resources Page of its website The paper gets its title, Shifting the eDiscovery Focus Back to Lawyers Looking for Evidence – from two things: one is the functionality in Equivio Themes, the latest addition to its eDiscovery platform Equivio Zoom; the other comes from my conviction that we have lost sight of eDiscovery as a route to evidence in all the stir and concern about eDiscovery process. Continue reading →

The Epiq Systems Summer Newsletter includes links to various resources which are worth looking at. One is a link to the video of Epiq’s recent panel called Changes to the Civil Procedure Rules on Costs which I wrote about here. Another is the article which I wrote in the recent Legal Efficiency supplement to The Times which included a quotation from Saida Joseph, International Director of Document Review Services at Epiq emphasising the fact-finding purpose of eDiscovery / eDisclosure. Continue reading →

I recently recorded a webinar with Bryant Bell of Guidance Software whose subject was BYOD (Bring Your own Device) and the impact on eDiscovery. That webinar is now available on demand and you can find it here. Continue reading →

I missed the eDiscovery Exchange in Hong Kong this year, spending the week instead at the Sedona Conference Cross-Border Programme in Zurich. One of the themes there was the rise in importance of cross-border eDiscovery with Asia-Pacific countries, whose law and language combine to complicate eDiscovery in the region. Continue reading →

Two recent articles by respected commentators address the future for law firms. The American Bar Association’s Law Practice website has published an article called Tomorrow’s Lawyers by Richard Susskind, much of which is a summary – and a useful one – of Susskind’s recent book of the same name. Continue reading →

I have referred before to the series of webinars being run by Equivio called Predictive Coding Minus the Hype. The second of these will take place on Wednesday, 17 July 2013 at 12:00pm EDT. It will be given by Conor, R Crowley, Esq., who is one of the most lucid speakers I know on a range of subjects, including predictive coding. You can register for this webinar here. Continue reading →

It’s great, all this easy communication, isn’t it? It’s not just lumbering servers on corporate networks fed by clunky desktops any more. We can exchange views and information for business or pleasure via any number of devices, from anywhere, at any time, using e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, texts, LinkedIn and instant messaging. What’s more, we can use our employers’ devices for personal stuff and our own devices for work. Marvellous, isn’t it? Continue reading →

Rachel Teisch of Xerox Litigation Services has written a helpful summary of eDiscovery implications in Asian nations with the title Think Global, Litigate Local: Handling the Demands of eDiscovery in Asian Countries. Continue reading →

AccessData has recently released Summation 5.0, the review application with the long pedigree and wholly new interface and functionality. You can read about Summation here: Continue reading →

eDiscovery software provider ZyLAB hs been busy, announcing new Visual Classification tools, Global Support Package for language handling and a white paper on technology-assisted review. Not the least of ZYLAB’s recent news has been the report of a recent very large deployment of ZyLAB’s eDiscovery and Production System. Continue reading →

eDiscovery is a words thing isn’t it? For all the technology used in its processing and analysis, the whole business of giving and receiving discovery depends on an understanding of words and language. A writes e-mails for B to read; search strategies and … Continue reading →

Recommind is giving a workshop on predictive coding in Birmingham on 4 July The opening speaker is HHJ Simon Brown QC who has been extremely active in the implementation of the new case management and eDisclosure rules. Mark Surguy of Eversheds will talk about timing – when is it right to use predictive coding? Continue reading →

I recently went to see Joel Tobias, Managing Director of forensics and electronic disclosure company CY4OR, at its head office in Bury near Manchester. CY4OR began as a one-man forensics company 11 years ago and has now grown to employ 30 people covering forensic collections and investigations for a range of purposes – criminal, investigative and regulatory – and the electronic disclosure and litigation support services. Continue reading →

eDiscovery software company iCONECT is running a webinar on 26 June about Rule 11 FRCP with the title “The Wrath” of Rule 11 – how to get boldly sanctioned. Continue reading →

Equivio, makers of text analysis software for eDiscovery, specialising in eliminating data redundancy and for predictive coding, are launching a series of webinars called Predictive Coding Minus the Hype. The webinars follow a series of educational seminars given by Equivio in New York, Washington and San Francisco, and the first one is called A Primer on Classification Technologies. Given by Avi Elkoni of Equivio, it covers key concepts such as: Continue reading →

Epiq Systems, which provides managed technology for eDiscovery and other requirements of the legal profession, has now opened its first data centre in Shanghai. This allows Epiq to collect, process and host data on mainland China, enabling its clients to host and review the data in country with the help of production and project management professionals with the requisite language skills. The press release is here. Continue reading →

Whilst we are not yet in sight of the end of e-mail and word documents as the primary source of discoverable data, increasing volumes of potentially discoverable information lie on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Continue reading →

ZyLAB has enhanced its eDiscovery bundle with functions specifically designed to make life easier for the reviewer and therefore to speed up the process of review. It has also come up with some useful resources which aim to help companies and their lawyers both understand and manage the eDiscovery processes. Continue reading →

I wrote recently about the excellent party which kCura hosted in London, which they choose as the venue for the release of their latest upgrade, Relativity 8. Continue reading →

AccessData has announced the release of Summation 5.0 which includes a licence for AccessData’s FTK forensic review tool, technology assisted review and free training. Continue reading →

Nuix has announced two new products, a Nuix Investigator Bundle and Nuix Investigator Lab. The aim is to make it easy and affordable for law enforcement and government agencies to undertake investigations. Continue reading →

eDiscovery companies rightly see sense in hiring representatives of their customer base to come in house and help them hone their messages for their audiences. For eDiscovery providers, that often means hiring people out of law firms who have not only the skills but an understanding of how the target audience works. Continue reading →

eDiscovery can be a resource-heavy business, making demands on both the technical and the human resources of an organisation. Every case generates its own set of decisions, not least as between the different technologies available to apply to the processing, analysis and review. Continue reading →

I am taking part in a webinar tomorrow organised by Inside Counsel in the company of Bryant Bell, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Guidance Software. Its title is Mobile devices and BYOD and the impact on eDiscovery. Continue reading →

iCONECT is launching a roadshow in September, taking its XERA eDiscovery application and XERA Advanced Analytics to a number of US cities and to London and Sydney. The list of cities and booking information can be found here. Continue reading →

I recorded a webinar recently with Johannes Scholtes, Chief Strategy Officer at ZyLAB, and Mary Mack, Enterprise Technology Counsel for ZyLAB. it was called Bridging the Gap between Legal and IT, a topic on which we have spoken before and on which I wrote a paper for ZyLAB last year. Continue reading →

I am pleased to see that UBIC has been listed on the NASDAQ stock market. The NASDAQ announcement is here. UBIC, which is among the sponsors of the eDisclosure Information Project, is a provider of eDiscovery solutions and services with offices … Continue reading →

Anyone who has ever seen an eDiscovery / eDisclosure demonstration will be aware of the Enron dataset, the very large collection of e-mail derived from the investigation into the collapse of Enron. It has been publicly available for some time, providing a test bed for a variety of search methodologies as well as an object-lesson in business practice. Continue reading →