Category Archives: Litigation Support

eDiscovery and predictive coding software provider Recommind is giving a seminar with the title 360 degrees on the Jackson Reforms on 27 March at 8:30am in St Paul’s Cathedral. Continue reading →

Lord Justice Jackson’s review of litigation costs covered very much more than the case management and eDisclosure components which are, inevitably, my primary focus. As with any major reforms, there are winners and losers or those who see themselves as such. The range of the reforms is immensely wide and one can accept some parts while rejecting others. Continue reading →

Consilio, until recently called First Advantage Litigation Consulting, is taking part in ACEDS’ Third Annual eDiscovery Conference and Exhibition between 28 February and 2 March in Hollywood, FL. Continue reading →

Anyone at a law firm can apply for a free delegate ticket to the LegalTech Asia Technology Summit, taking place in Hong Kong on March 4–5. If you work in legal technology anywhere in the Asia-Pacific then you will want to be there. Continue reading →

I wrote recently (see FTI Report – Advice from Counsel by Ari Kaplan: Trends that will change E-Discovery) about the Advice from Counsel study written by Ari Kaplan in conjunction with FTI Technology whose strength is to bring qualitative and anecdotal views to supplement the mere numbers which one gets from many reports. Continue reading →

AccessData’s Mobile Phone Examiner Plus (MPE+) is designed to help lawyers and investigators recover evidence from mobile devices such as iPhones and iPods and from Android devices, and it enables the recovery of data from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and many other sources of critical evidence. Continue reading →

kCura’s annual user conference, Relativity Fest, offers hands-on labs, breakout sessions and practical knowledge which delegates can use immediately. Continue reading →

Equivio is well known for its analytical solutions for eDiscovery. Its overarching product, Equivio Zoom, bundles together tools for near-duplicate detection, e-mail threading and predictive coding, together with its new product, Equivio Themes, which allows identification of thematic links between documents. Continue reading →

I have learned by now that there is no point in attempting a wide-ranging summary of the themes and players at LegalTech because Gary MacFadden will do a much more comprehensive job of it than the rest of us put together. I bumped into him ten yards into my first foray into the exhibit hall and decided I would learn much more by talking to him than by any amount of wandering the floors. Continue reading →

Guidance Software is presenting a webinar on 26 February with the title EnCase Forensic v7: the Best Practice in Digital Investigations. Continue reading →

This is a reminder of the webinar to be presented by kCura on 28 February at 11 AM CST at which Dr David Grossman, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, will conduct an interactive discussion on the statistical validation of relativity assisted review and on the statistics involved in a computer-assisted review workflow. Continue reading →

EDiscovery and information management technology provider ZyLAB has announced the appointment of Simon Maguire as Sales Director for ZyLAB UK. The press release is here. Continue reading →

The use of predictive coding and other machine learning algorithms in eDiscovery is a very practical and commercial application of advanced and sophisticated search technology whose use requires the development of best practice standards. Continue reading →

Every organisation ought to have a cloud strategy, even if that strategy is to (try and) ignore the promise and the challenges of the cloud. One ought to have some idea of the differences between a public and a private cloud, and to understand the main legal considerations of moving to the cloud, including data privacy, secure access and who is responsible for your ESI. Continue reading →

One of the more encouraging trends during 2012 was the growing focus on getting to the root of the data problem instead of merely addressing eDiscovery / eDisclosure problems as they arose. Continue reading →

The eDiscovery software and services company formerly known as First Advantage Litigation Consulting is now called Consilio, the culmination of a year of acquisition, growth, senior appointments, technology developments and brand presence. There is more information about the change of name here. Continue reading →

EnCase Enterprise is Guidance Software’s powerful digital investigations platform for security, internal investigations, and electronic discovery in the enterprise. It enables remote search, collection, preservation and analysis of data from servers and workstations anywhere in the corporate network without disrupting operations. Continue reading →

This is my third start at writing about the launch of the Nuix information governance platform Luminate. The results of the first two attempts may turn up in due course in an essay on good marketing or on the importance of information governance or, perhaps, both at once. The role of this site is to give short factual accounts of things of interest in eDiscovery / eDisclosure – a subject, verb, object approach instead of elegantly-turned sentences conveying thoughtful commentary. Continue reading →

My recent article Applying science to the validation of technology assisted review attracted a gratifying amount of attention. It was based around a paper called Measuring and Validating the Effectiveness of Relativity Assisted Review by Dr David Grossman, an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Continue reading →

IBM has completed its acquisition of StoredIQ, advancing IBM’s capacity to help clients react to eDiscovery demands, to dispose of information which has outlived its purpose, and to extract value from the information which it keeps. There is a press release here. Continue reading →

What do you do next, when you have conquered e-mail threading, near-duplicate detection and predictive coding, and wrapped them all together with other analytical tools like Batching in an attractive package called Equivio Zoom? What predictive coding has done for us is shifted the focus back towards the lead litigators and case strategists, and taken their input at the beginning of the exercise where its value is highest. Continue reading →

The last round of development at FTI Technology was all about the long-awaited Ringtail 8, about predictive coding, about usability and workflow, and about the interrelation between FTI’s software tools and the support and services component combined together as Acuity. Continue reading →

Here is a list of webinars to be presented by AccessData over the next few weeks, covering everything from AD Discovery 4.0 and AccessData’s Mobile Phone Examiner MPE+, through Cyber Security, Malware Triage and Enterprise Investigations using AD Enterprise. Continue reading →

One of the most acceptable invitations here at LegalTech in New York is to the eDiscovery Institute dinner, to be held again at Becco on Wednesday, January 30th. Becco is the flagship restaurant of chef and producer Lidia Bastianich, host of Lidia’s Italy, an Emmy-nominated television series. This year’s co-host is First Advantage Litigation Consulting. Continue reading →

It takes two, at least, to develop a set of processes to enable a law firm to manage its clients’ eDiscovery projects cost-effectively and yet to a high quality. The best software will fail in the hands of an inadequate team and the best litigation support team in the world cannot succeed without good software tools. You need both. Continue reading →

Now here’s an announcement which stands out in the pre-LegalTech flurry. I already know of at least four or five releases or upgrades which are exciting and interesting and for which I would drop everything to hear about. Continue reading →

Xerox Litigation Services seems to have had a good 2012, with a 100% increase in client end users and a 60% increase in data under management. Continue reading →

One of the most memorable advertising slogans of all time was Beanz Means Heinz, still in use over 40 years after it was devised in a London pub. Simple and memorable, it served to push the Heinz brand ahead of all competition. Great slogans do not work on their own, of course, but they can help turned good quality products into market leaders. Continue reading →

Here is an interesting article by David Hart QC on the UK Human Rights Blog about how judges form a view on the credibility of witnesses, particularly where there are conflicting accounts of events. Continue reading →

You do not need to to think too hard to work out what Recommind’s “EasyUpload” does, even without the full title of the press release Recommind Announces “EasyUpload” For Industry’s First eDiscovery “Ecosystem” Linking In-House Counsel, Outside Counsel and Regulatory Authorities. Continue reading →

Tom W. Olofson, chairman and CEO of Epiq Systems, and Elizabeth M. Braham, Epiq’s EVP-Operations and CFO will participate in William Blair & Company’s Electronic Discovery Summit due take place at the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel in New York City on Tuesday, January 29. The press release is here. Continue reading →

I would love to claim the credit for this, but the timing doesn’t quite work. I wrote yesterday à propos the eDiscovery / eDisclosure market that “informed and original comment is a valuable adjunct to the routine but necessary marketing materials of convention” and that “social media interaction is a necessary supplement”, adding that “engaging with others on Twitter” can make a “valuable contribution to serious discussion around the subject”. Continue reading →

I wrote in complimentary terms earlier this year about the Information Governance and eDiscovery Strategy Exchange held in Washington in September. Amongst other things, I pointed to a video made at the event in which sponsors and delegates gave their extremely positive views of what they had seen and heard, and the people whom they had met, at the Exchange. Continue reading →

An article on Inside Counsel from Symantec – Clearwell called Like the Great Wall: E-discovery barriers still exist between the U.S. and China summarises succinctly the difficulties faced by those who seek electronic discovery on the US model from China. Continue reading →

I had the pleasure of doing a webinar on Early Case Assessment last year with George Socha and Tom Gelbmann of Apersee along with Chad Papenfuss of the FTC and Caitlin Murphy of AccessData. The style was relaxed without derogating from the importance of the subject matter, and it was fun to do – and I hope to listen to. Continue reading →

Guidance Software, makers of EnCase Enterprise Version 7 and other EnCase forensic collection tools, is giving a webinar on Tuesday 29 January 2:00pm EST with the title Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Internal Investigations. Continue reading →

Equivio Zoom is now available in Relativity, allowing Relativity users to access the Zoom functionality without leaving Relativity. Continue reading →

It seems a bit unfair to describe Dean Gonsowski as a “veteran”, as Law Technology News does in an article headed E-Discovery Veteran Leaves Symantec for Recommind. I qualified as a lawyer 15 years before Dean did, so if he is a “veteran”, I wonder what term would be applied to me. Continue reading →

I recently attended one of iCONECT’s weekly webinar demos and found it a helpful way to get an introduction to some of the functionality in iCONECT’s XERA review application. Demos run to a timetable which can be found here. Continue reading →

You do not get ahead of the pack by following everyone else, and kCura, makers of the Relativity eDiscovery review application, have never done the same as the others. If you detect a growing interest on my part in video presentations, that is partly because we are seeing some interesting use of that medium and partly because I am slowly getting into it myself. Continue reading →

I recently saw a chart tracing the history of IBM’s acquisition of smaller companies over the years, adding niche expertise to IBM’s already comprehensive set of tools. On its own, the subset of IBM called Information Lifecycle Governance, which is concerned with information governance is so enormous that these acquisitions do not necessarily appear to add bulk. Continue reading →

I have yet to put together my usual list of forthcoming eDiscovery conferences for 2013, but wanted to draw attention again to the Asian Technology Summit being run jointly by ALM, the producers of LegalTech and ILTA, in Hong Kong on 4-5 March. Continue reading →

An article on Law Technology News has the self-explanatory heading Kroll Study Sees Dramatic Drop in eDiscovery sanctions. The point is an important one, because it is sanctions, or the fear of sanctions, for eDiscovery failures which drives so much of the cost. What brings the percentage of “prominent cases that imposed sanctions on parties” down from 42% to 32% between 2011 and 2012? Continue reading →

Short podcasts are proving attractive as a way in which lawyers can get quickly up-to-date with developments and pending developments in electronic disclosure / eDiscovery. I recorded one some time ago with Nigel Murray, managing director of Huron Legal in London, and was reminded of it recently when a solicitor contacted me because she could not find it. Continue reading →

One needs to be careful when drawing attention to an article by another which refers back to oneself, and it is with some diffidence that I refer you to an article called Coughs and Sneezes by Charles Holloway on the Millnet blog which itself quotes something I said. Continue reading →

Ernst & Young and New Zealand-based eDiscovery Consulting are putting on the Managing eDiscovery in New Zealand Conference on 13 February 2013 in Auckland. The keynote speech is to be delivered by His Honour Judge David Harvey who is well known to those of us who appreciate serious and relevant judicial thinking about the crossover between law and technology. Continue reading →

Guidance Software has appointed Vincent Schiavo as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Vincent Schiavo’s background is in security software companies and CEO Victor Limongelli says “We’re extremely pleased that he’s bringing his deep expertise in enterprise, channel, federal government, and international sales to Guidance Software at a time when we’re poised for further expansion.” Continue reading →

It is quite hard to draw attention to any particular sessions at LegalTech. This is partly because of the sheer noise which surrounds the event, but partly also because there is work enough in preparing the sessions themselves – the speakers, the content, the slides and the logistics – that there is little time left over for promotion. Continue reading →

As we get closer to the new regime of cost management in UK civil litigation, it may be helpful to re-read the interim report on the cost management pilot published by the Ministry of justice in February 2012. Continue reading →

The b-Discovery 6th annual party takes place at Arena NYC in New York on 29 January at 9.00pm. This year’s party is raising money for Harvard Centre, an early intervention agency for children with special needs. Continue reading →

For many years, Nigel Murray, managing director of Huron Legal in London, has organised a Commonwealth Brunch in New York on the Sunday before LegalTech. The form is that Nigel books some tables at a convenient venue and welcomes any LegalTech delegate from a Commonwealth country. We pay our own way. The timing is civilised, as are the people who attend. Continue reading →

The next Tweeting Legals Tweetup is at the Knights Templar in Chancery Lane on 11 February at 6:30 PM. There is more information and the opportunity to sign up here. Continue reading →

I moderated a webinar yesterday, organised by Legal IQ and with speakers from First Advantage Litigation Consulting. Our subject was Managing Internal Investigations. Continue reading →

The respected eDJ Group has published its 2013 eDiscovery Trend Predictions. The report itself is available only to subscribers or on payment of a fee, but Barry Murphy has provided a helpful summary of it. Continue reading →

Mary Mack and Johannes Scholtes of ZyLAB are giving a webinar on Wednesday 9 January at 12:00 PM EST. Continue reading →

The Lawyer reports that Singapore’s new chief justice, Sundaresh Menon, is investigating the possibility of establishing the Singapore International Commercial Court. Continue reading →

The Society for Computers and Law has invited Mr Justice Akenhead to speak under the title Judges and Technology, Friends and Foes. This talk was to have been given last year but has been held over to 16 January 2013. Continue reading →

I have been recording a group of short podcasts with Millnet in anticipation of the new case management and eDisclosure rules coming into force in April 2013. Continue reading →

Internal investigations raise much the same implications in any jurisdiction, and most of these apply equally to litigation and to regulatory investigations. Continue reading →

eDiscovery Journal, part of the respected eDJ Group, has produced a new report, a predictive coding case study called How One Enterprise Dipped a Toe Into Predictive Coding. Continue reading →

Professor Richard Susskind emphasises the diverse range of methods which are available to lawyers and which ought to be considered when approaching any project as part of his suggestion that: Continue reading →

Guidance Software has released EnCase Portable Version 4, with ease of use as the primary consideration. Continue reading →

There is nothing particularly glamorous or exciting about archiving. It lacks the cut and thrust of courtroom battles over eDiscovery / eDisclosure, and perhaps seems mundane when compared with the new frontier of predictive coding, that place where technology, jurisprudence and the business of being a lawyer meet. Continue reading →

The EDRM – the Electronic Discovery Reference Model – is that ubiquitous diagram invented by George Socha and Tom Gelbmann which illustrates the stages of a typical electronic discovery / disclosure process. The website is also full of information designed to help those engaged in eDiscovery, including a glossary of terms, suggested standards, and a mass of material on metrics, search and testing, as well as another well-known model the Information Governance Reference Model or IGRM. Continue reading →

One of the most interesting acquisitions of 2012 came when Xerox bought Lateral Data, bringing the latter’s behind-the-firewall software Viewpoint into the same stable as Xerox’s hosted service OmniX and its technology assisted review tool CategoriX. Continue reading →

An article by David Pelligrinelli, President of AFX Search, is headed Sound advice: How targeting voice, phone and other audio records can bolster e-discovery. Sound advice it is indeed. Continue reading →

I have been re-tweeting iCONECT’s announcements of its analytics and other webinars for some time without realising that this is a weekly event, with a webinar on some aspect of XERA taking place every Wednesday at 1.00pm New York Time. Last week’s was on Advanced Analytics. Continue reading →

Symantec is organising a Twitter Chat on Tuesday 18 December at 10:00am PT. It will focus on SharePoint and will discuss the reasons why organisations need need SharePoint governance and on the role of archiving and eDiscovery in governance plans. Continue reading →

I said in an earlier post that I would keep writing about the parachute jump made by Huron Legal’s Nigel Murray in aid of Help for Heroes until he had raised at least £2,500. He passed that milestone almost immediately and his total now stands at just short of £3,000. Can we get him to £3,500 by Christmas? Continue reading →

Computers and Law, the website of the Society for Computers and Law, has published a series of predictions for the future, as it does at the end of every year. Continue reading →

According to information management technology provider Nuix, approximately 80% of data kept by organisations is unstructured. Companies are better at producing data than at searching and managing it, and the consequences extend beyond the obligations to identify relevant material for eDiscovery / eDisclosure purposes. Continue reading →

Many of those who read this blog, whether in-house or from law firms, are not necessarily going to understand the technical minutiae which lie behind Guidance Software’s latest announcement, headed Guidance Software Debuts Fastest Forensic Bridge about its faster than ever Tableau® T35u USB 3.0 forensic SATA/IDE bridge for forensic imaging in both lab and field environments. Continue reading →

I have yet to write up my impressions of the Lawtech Europe Congress held in Prague in November. It was one of a series of back-to-back conferences in which I took part in widely-separated jurisdictions during November, and its lessons will keep whilst I catch up with other things. Continue reading →

Metropolitan Corporate Counsel has provided a summary of a white paper written by me and by Patrick Burke, Senior Director and Assistant General Counsel at Guidance Software, about the eDiscovery implications of the Cloud. Continue reading →

In a webinar on 11 December called Significantly Reduce Enterprise Investigative Costs with Remote Forensics, Tameka Brown, Product Marketing Manager at Guidance Software, will explain how an organization can reduce enterprise investigative costs using remote forensics. Continue reading →

A Legal Week article Fixed-fee billing favoured by 50% of corporates, LW research finds reports on research which shows that fixed-fee billing arrangements are favoured by 50% of corporate clients. Continue reading →

Robert Childress founded the Masters Conference, running it in tandem with his role at Wave Software. He has now become the President and CEO of the Masters Conference, able to devote his full attention to the further development of this significant player in the provision of practical CLE education. Continue reading →

Jonathan Fowler, Director of Forensics at First Advantage Litigation Consulting and David Shonka, Principal Deputy General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission are amongst the speakers at a two hour webinar on Tuesday 11 December at 12.00pm ET. Continue reading →

AccessData has been touring the world (almost literally) with its Roadshow about the all-new Summation. Those who missed the Roadshow can catch up with a live webinar to be given on 11 December a 12.00pm Mountain Standard Time. Continue reading →

However important eDiscovery may be, it is but one of the challenges facing large companies in respect of their data. For many sectors, compliance with regulatory obligations and industry standards is not merely desirable but compulsory, a prerequisite for doing business at all. Continue reading →

Nuix prides itself on its ability to process virtually unlimited quantities of unstructured data really fast. As CEO Eddie Sheehy says in this interview, there is overlap between Nuix’s products and solutions for forensic investigation, eDiscovery and information governance. Continue reading →

Following close behind the expansion of its document review services in London and elsewhere, First Advantage Litigation Consulting has now expanded its managed review services in Washington D.C., expanding its expert multilingual support for eDiscovery and managed review worldwide. Continue reading →

Equivio Zoom is an application which pulls together the products for which Equivio has long been well known – e-mail threading, near-duplicate detection and its predictive coding tool Equivio Relevance. Zoom pulls it all together with new analytical and reporting tools in a single attractive package. Continue reading →

Managed review is one of my pet subjects at the moment, in the sense that the growing number of leading providers offering managed review services is a development which exceeds the power of technology alone to change the way this type of legal work is performed. Continue reading →

kCura has released Version 7.5 of Relativity with the integration of processing as the primary (but by no means the only) major enhancement. It has also brought Relativity Assisted Review – kCura’s predictive coding tool – into the Global Applications Catalogue, allowing users to switch easily between a manual and a computer-assisted process. Analytics, usability and infrastructure have all been improved. Continue reading →

For some years now, I have moderated a conference in London jointly with Browning Marean, Senior Counsel at DLA Piper US and George Socha of Socha Consulting. That same team is bringing a new conference to London on 17 and 18 April next year, part of a series which (without me) takes place also in five US cities during the year. Continue reading →

I did a series of short podcasts earlier this year with Millnet’s James Moeskops, concentrating on predictive coding. We have now moved on to a new series, with a focus on the new disclosure rules due to take effect in April 2013. Continue reading →

Symantec is presenting a webinar on Thursday 6 December (that is, TODAY) at 10:00 am – 11:00 am PST with the title Ignorance is Not Bliss – Why SMBs Need to Defend Against Cyber Attacks. Continue reading →

Nigel Murray is Managing Director at Huron Legal in London. Those who have known him for years as the exemplar of practice development sociability (with all that that entails in food and drink) were rather surprised when, a few years ago, he announced his intention of cycling several hundred miles across France in support of the wounded servicemen’s charity Help for Heroes. Continue reading →

Everyone is talking about defensible deletion, but is anyone actually doing it? That is the question posed by Barry Murphy in his eDiscovery Journal article Defensible Deletion Gaining Steam. Continue reading →

You may have come across the quotation attributed to Gaius Petronius Arbiter who, in Nero’s time, apparently wrote: We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Continue reading →

It is a very great pleasure to be able to use the first post on this new blog to congratulate former Chief US Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm on his confirmation by the Senate as a District Judge. Continue reading →

Legal tweeters are invited (the invitation is here) to gather at the Knights Templar on Chancery Lane at 7pm on Wednesday December for “drinks and good company” and an opportunity to “practice those social skills people keep telling us we need”. Continue reading →

Guidance Software is giving a webinar on 11 December at 11am PST with the title Top Five eDiscovery Recommendations for 2013. The presenters are Daniel Lim, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Guidance Software and Bryant Bell, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Guidance Software. Continue reading →

Since its complete revamp of its Summation litigation applications, AccessData has been touring the world, literally, to introduce the new product – and it is entirely new – to existing and new users. On 6 December, the roadshow reaches Charlotte in North Carolina. The details are here. Continue reading →

My main output is a blog at http:chrisdale.wordpress.com which has carried commentary on eDisclosure / eDiscovery around the world since 2007. Some time ago, I started using a Google Plus page for shorter articles – promoting webinars, drawing attention to articles by others, reporting on new releases or industry appointments – which were no less important than my own commentary but which were of a different kind. Continue reading →