E-Discovery Round Table

I found it interesting how much of this session was absolutely dominated by cost concerns. This is obviously a hot-button issue. That’s totally understandable. The cost of collecting, processing, searching and reviewing gigs and gigs of data is huge, and not only that, it’s a cost that you’re going to have to pass on to your client, and that’s not going to be a fun conversation.

There were a number of suggestions on cutting those costs, including narrowing by file types, or dates, or anything else you can think of! Probably the best advice though, was to collaborate with the opposing counsel, which I know has not been the model in the legal world, to narrow down what you really need to process. If you have 20 custodians of interest, rather than processing all the documents and emails belonging to those custodians, can you come to an agreement on the 2 custodians who are the really key custodians, who will get you 90% of what you need, and process those? Of course, you preserve all 20, to go back and get that 10% that you might need, but you only process and review those 2 custodians. Cuts down on costs immensely to be able to come to those agreements.

Afterwards had a chance to chat with Brett Burney, a fellow blogger, and some other folks. Lots of interesting war stories, etc. I enjoyed it so much I didn’t get to any of the vendor booths during the hour break. I need to make a concerted effort to do that tomorrow!

In a fun, odd story, I was walking past the Conference Concierge Booth and overheard someone reading off things I had Twittered, and someone recognized me from the Twitter profile photo. That was cool though, gave me an opportunity to chat with Tom Mighell, the conference chair this year. Never hurts to get the ear of the chair..:)

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