EDD Update

Inference Metrics 1.5

Analytics and e-discovery provider Inference Data has introduced Inference Metrics  1.5, the latest version of its reporting and review tool. The upgrade helps users view matters via a dashboard interface. Full release here.

StoredIQ Adds Classification-Based Security

StoredIQ has debuted its classification-based security service, which helps companies create a classification to represent data that will be reviewed by a legal team, before finalizing collection and preservation decisions, to reduce the need to move data or change security privileges on each system that has files that need to be reviewed. Full release here.

Integreon's eView 3.0

Integreon has launched its eView 3.0 hosted document review. The web-based service uses concept search and document clustering to help users find similar, related, and relevant documents. Full release here.

Kroll Debuts Ontrack Inview 6.0

Kroll Ontrack has debuted Ontrack Inview 6.0, an upgrade of its online document repository. It adds near duplicate identification, e-mail threading, support for Eastern European languages, and machine translation capabilities, says the company.  Full release here.

Anacomp Early Case Assessment Services

Anacomp has introduced early case assessment services to help law firms and in-house legal departments make proactive decisions about case strategy and forecast the cost and time involved in e-discovery. Full release here.

Mimecast Upgrades Unified E-Mail Management

Mimecast has upgraded its Unified E-Mail Management to add Mimecast Services for Exchange, which directly links the software-as-a-service e-mail archiving with Microsoft Exchange to help companies manage e-mail inboxes while preventing data leaks. Full release here.

Women in eDiscovery Panel

Women in eDiscovery will hold a panel discussion, sponsored by CT Summation, at the upcoming Masters Conference October 13-14. Full release here.

Blowback ...

There have been times in this industry when new technology applications were both a blessing and curse due to unanticipated consequences.  The CIA has a term for this -- "blowback" -- the harmful, unintended future implication to a current action.  We're living a classic case of blowback in the EDD world today simply because of the need to deal with billions of emails, attachments, instant messages, Tweets, etc. in an age of defensible electronic record policy.  Who knew!?   So when Google announced it's new open source platform Wave, my hands started to tremble ...

#ILTA09: Recovering Litigation Support Expenses

In an economic downturn, a law firm, like any other business, has to recover expenses wherever possible to protect its bottom line. Mary Pat Poteet, director of litigation support at DLA Piper, David Lindley, e-discovery services manager at Winston & Strawn, and Cedya Tocsoy, manager of litigation technology service at Torys, are no strangers to managing IT and litigation support expenses and watching the bottom line. At a panel this afternoon at ILTA, they discussed, for a packed room, how law firms can recover costs through new technology.

First, you need the support from the decision-makers so that they won't write off litigation support expenses. At some firms, it could be the CIO; at other firms it could be the CFO. Once you have buy-in from the top of the food chain, Poteet says you should learn how the firm's billing system works, and the finance people need to understand how the litigation support folks work before they can bill for their services. 

#ILTA09: Brute Force vs. The New Way

To keep the attention of a roomful of conference goers right after lunch, you have to do something a little different. Rather than a typical moderator and panelist setup on the "Litigation Support Technology as a Value Foundation for Clients" panel, Nan Jefferies, national manager of litigation support at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, and Rebecca Morrison, director of litigation support at Williams & Connolly competed against each other today in a hypothetical situation to provide litigation support services for the fake company Mega Pharma, which had recently merged with NewCo. Christopher King, a partner at Sonnenschein, played the role of the general counsel at Mega Pharma, who knew nothing about e-discovery; the NewCo. GC, who knew e-discovery, had been laid off in the "merger."

In the scenario, a litigation hold had been issued for two pending lawsuits over the potency of a drug manufactured by NewCo. "You might want to check on what's going on with some of these computers," said King. "After the litigation hold, Smith and Jones called the help desk and asked how to delete some documents. The help desk didn't know about the litigation hold and let them delete them." Cost, of course, was a huge issue in the hypothetical.

Miami Hacker: Computer Genius or Common Hood?

Since his indictment for allegedly stealing personal data from 170 million credit and debit card accounts, the federal government has made 28-year-old Albert Gonzalez out to be a hacker genius.

I don’t blame the U.S. Secret Service for portraying Mr. Gonzalez, already in federal custody on a May 2008 indictment, as a computer prodigy. If I were the agent in charge of the Gonzalez case, I’d try to pass him off as a genius too. How else could I explain how one of my agency’s former informants continued to break into corporate networks right under my nose?

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

A few months ago I wrote one of my all time favorite blogs entitled  The Chimney Sweep Boy and the Goldsmith: the Ancient Origins of the Doctrine of Spoliation. Here I tell the story of the old English case that originated the doctrine of spoliation,  Armory v. Delamirie, 1 Strange 505, 93 Eng. Rep. 664 (K.B.1722). This 1722 decision was recently cited by Judge Grimm in a more recent case,  Goodman v. Praxair Services, Inc. _F.Supp.2d_, 2009 WL 1955805 (D.Md. July 7, 2009). Judge Grimm pointed out how the Armory case involved a story of a chimney sweep boy that could be straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. Dickens thus became the theme for my write-up of the Armory and Goodman cases. 

eMag Introduces PreVu 3.0

EMag Solutions has released PreVu 3.0, a hosted raw data culling application that helps law firms sort, search, and filter electronically stored information. Full release here.

Recommind Introduces MindServer Categorization

Recommind has introduced MindServer Categorization, which helps firms automate records management by finding and tagging relevant information so that it is easier to identify data that needs to be kept and data that needs to be deleted. Full release here.

Tiff (Paper Image) v. Native Review: Join the Debate

My blog this week is entitled: Plato’s Cave: why most lawyers love paper and hate e-discovery and what this means to the future of legal education. For some reason people keep calling it a rant. I think of it more as an essay on philosophy and e-discovery. Anyway, it has provoked some good debate on education and the future of the legal profession, as I had hoped, but also some debate on the age old issue (yeah, like for months now) of Tiff versus Native review. Check out especially the comments at the end of the Plato's Cave blog. 

Corporations, Make Your Own TREC

Many corporations have data on discovery review consistency that rivals and is in some ways superior to the studies conducted by TREC; they ought to share that data to inform the debate on the use of alternative discovery review methodologies.

TREC (i.e. the Text REtrieval Conference) does important work measuring the effectiveness and consistency of different approaches to reviewing large document collections. Different teams, some with different methodologies and technologies, review the same set of documents to identify subsets of records that are responsive to standard requests.  Having metrics on the consistency of the results is important in establishing benchmarks on how well different systems or approaches work.

Clearwell 5.0 Adds Review and Production

Clearwell Systems has added review and production modules to its Clearwell E-Discovery Platform 5.0. The new features help lawyers analyze, review, redact, and produce documents within a single product.
The software also tracks actions on case documents, providing milestones  throughout the discovery process so users can monitor progress. Redaction features can automatically redact sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers. Full release here.

MindTalent CaseView

MindTalent CaseView helps users  automatically find the most significant concepts, issues, and custodians in document populations. The company says its key features include:
* Delivers "unbiased" discovery --as well as user-controlled exploration.
* Requires no up-front setup and investment in dictionaries, keywords or ontology.
* Provides a dynamic taxonomy creation and management environmen
* Produces a filtered data set quickly for further iterative analysis
Click here for press release.

Introducing Michael Dalewitz, Professor of E-Discovery

Over at my blog, GabesGuide.com, I posted about Michael Dalewitz of the Peak Organization, who was recently named as a professor of e-discovery for New York Law School. This is a very positive trend for the industry, and the legal field in general.  I also make mention of the great Ralph Losey, and take a pot shot at the Florida Gators.  Check it out when you have a chance.

RenewData Webinar 8/17 @ 2 pm EDT

RenewData offers a webinar about its Vestigate Legal Review services and early case assessment. Their folks will address how to shorten reviews, find critical data faster, and ID relevant documents, and more.
Reg info here:

Daegis Launches DocHunter 5.0

Daegis has upgraded its online review tool, DocHunter 5.0. The upgrade integrates culling tools into its review platform to help users sample and target relevant subsets for review and production. CEO Kurt Jensen says that DocHunter 5.0 “eliminates the need to double-process data due to the transfer or data between multiple applications.” Users can compile reports detailing file type frequency, size, e-mail subject frequency, and word indexes. Full release here.

RenewData Buys Digital Mandate and Vestigate

RenewData announced today that it has successfully completed an acquisition of Digital Mandate, which manufactured Vestigate document review software.

For RenewData, the acquisition adds the Vestigate application to its repertoire of e-discovery tools to  hone in on early case assessment and first-pass review. At the same time, Vestigate may see more light of day as part of the more comprehensive EDD tool set offered by RenewData.

Equivalent Data NeedleFinder 3.5

The Legal Department of Chevron Chemical has purchased NeedleFinder 3.5 an e-discovery software from Equivalent Data. Company CEO Mike Medrano states NeedleFinder 3.5 was appealing to Chevron Phillips because the software puts their legal team in the driver's seat, relying on their experience and intellect rather than a risky set of keywords." Access release here.

H5 and O'Melveny & Myers form an alliance

O'Melveney & Myers, a global law firm  teams up with H5, an information retrieval firm to help the firm's clients meet legal and regulatory requirements pertaining to document review and analysis. Press release here.

Anacomp adds Bowman and Brooke to its client roster

CaseLogistix has also been selected by Bowman and Brooke, a product liability firm to manage their ESI. Here for release.

McCarthy Tetrault installs CaseLogistix

Canada's McCarthy Tetrault has rolled out Anacomp's CaseLogistix litigation review software. The firm states it enables legal teams to quickly collect, organize, review, analyze and produce ESI. Release here.

IBM Gets With Analytics and PSS Systems

IBM announced new functionality in their e-discovery software: IBM content analytics. The new analytical features aim to help clients gain better insight and understanding into their information; minimize legal discovery costs; and improve legal strategy decisions. 

IBM InfoSphere eDiscovery Manager and IBM InfoSphere eDiscovery Analyzer include enhanced early case assessment tools, extended support for additional types of electronically stored information content, and open APIs for partner software integration.

IBM InfoSphere eDiscovery Analyzer utilizes IBM content analytics technology to enhance its early case assessment capabilities. In effect, users can visualize e-mail communications patterns across their entire organization to discover unexpected communications, identify new individuals whose information is subject to review, and trace the flow of topics over time.

IBM’s eDiscovery software now includes extended API support promising customers and partners the opportunity to deliver customized software with IBM eDiscovery. For example, PSS Systems is working with IBM to deliver joint compliance offerings that address corporate e-discovery and legal needs of in-house counsel, reduce the discovery burden on IT organizations, and support records retention programs for defensible disposal.

IE Discovery hosts its second E-Discovery Symposium

The 2009 Electronic Discovery Symposium for Government Agencies will be held on October 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Judge Paul W. Grimm is expected to be among the faculty of presenters. Open to only federal government employees, the symposium is designed to help government agencies anticipate and meet their e-discovery requirements. Click here for press release.

The Masters Conference held on October 13-14

The Masters Conference has also redesigned its website to help attendees and visitors access more information about each individual speaker and learn more about their credentials. To view the new features of the revamped website and register for the upcoming Global Corporate Change: Navigation Discovery, Risk, and Security conference click here.

Bye Bye e-? Mon Makes a Ruling!

Should Law Technology News drop the e- from e-discovery?

After a wonderful debate, with 22 comments (and counting) — as well as some back-channel commentary from folks I (also) listen to very carefully — I'm ready to issue my ruling:

Nope, the e- stays.

It was a Solomon-esque decision, but ultimately, our underlying agenda is to educate folks and demystify technology, and keep things clear and simple.  I was persuaded by the arguments that with so many legal professionals still befuddled by electronic data discovery, the time isn't right to just go back to generic discovery. EDD has specific meaning, and right now, the e- helps clarify the discussion, so we will continue using e-discovery in the pages of LTN and in this blog. But let's all move to the day when we no longer need the appendage.

Cataphora Collection Engine 1.4

CCE 1.4 gives users the option to have data collected on-site by a Cataphora expert, send data to directly to Cataphora for processing or use a software tool to collect the data in-house. Access release here.

The Fragmentation of the Communication Container

Here's a thought that's been percolating around recently. I thought that writing it out and sharing it would help it solidify, and generate some feedback at the same time.

In the beginning: Kevin Bacon

It seems to me that our methods of communication have changed over the last few years, in some ways dramatically. I used to think that as we gained UBA (ubiquitous broadband access) that the traditional  document paradigm of the 4-cornered document would be lost and become replaced by the hyperlinked document. The reasoning behind this (at the time) seemed quite sound: with UBA, we could send URLs instead of the documents themselves. This, in turn, would mean that documents would stay in place and that we could finally use all sorts of cool linking technologies because the ancillary linked documents would still be relatively in place. Hence the links would still work. Documents would look more and more like web pages. Discovery would be negotiated as to how many layers of links would be included. I called those links "degrees of separation". Hence, the entire theory was called the Kevin Bacon theory of discovery.

eMag Solutions' Data Migration Program

EMag Solutions has introduced a data migration and reclamation program to help corporations manage large stores of data. The program uses eMag’s PreVu data culling technology and the company’s expertise accessing and processing legacy and archive media to reduce the amount of data stored. Full release here.

Stay Afloat!

By Jeffrey Zinsmeister & R. Timothy Slattery

 
Litigation associates eventually find themselves tasked with a large-scale document collection. Unglamorous, tedious, and extremely time-consuming, such assignments offer little glory and much risk. The partner wants to minimize his or her time on the collection, but will take unpleasant notice when something goes wrong.

Additionally, most large collection projects are plagued by insufficient management resources. Organizing a large collection on short order within a budget requires logistical acumen, managerial competence, and discovery experience. Law schools do not grade on such knowledge and firms rarely look for this in new recruits.

Highway Robbery?

By Anne Kershaw & Joseph Howie

If you send an e-mail to three people, your system keeps one copy, with all three people listed in the "To" field. If you need to see all your e-mails to just one of those people, you search for that name. It's still just one copy. Indeed, it would be silly to have multiple copies. The same holds true for document discovery repositories, yet a recent survey suggests that lawyers still don't "get it," and often insist on keeping multiple, unnecessary copies.

Lawyers who fail to check for duplicates across multiple custodians, instead removing only duplicates from within the records of individual custodians, end up reviewing at least 20% more records on average. Whether or not their document review bills are ever audited, these lawyers are not meeting their ethical obligations to both clients and the justice system.

Read more here.

Ball in Your Court: "All Wet"

By Craig Ball

I was once trial counsel for the water authority of a Mexican city seeking damages for delay in the mapping of a water system serving three million customers. I learned that most water entering the pipes never reached consumers because the patchwork system was riddled with leaks. The leaks were difficult to repair because the water authority didn't know where its pipes were buried!

Repair crews made Swiss cheese of streets, but the massive leakage limited water service to just a few hours a day. Those who could afford it erected tanks to hoard water. The rest suffered. Until Servicios de Agua y Drenaje learned where its pipes lay, staunched the leaks and addressed local hoarding, the system stayed broken. ¡Ay, caramba! 

Read the rest here.

ARMA Publishes ESI Book by Isaza & Jablonski

ARMA, the association for records management professionals, has released 7 Steps for Legal Holds of ESI and Other Documents, a book to help law firms develop strategies for preserving information.

The book, by John Isaza, a lawyer at Howett Isaza Law Group, and John Jablonski, a partner at Goldberg Segalla, (and one of our EDDUpdate authors) describes best practices for identifying trigger events and initiating litigation holds.

More information here.

Brava! Upgrade Improves Unicode Support

Informative Graphics has upgraded its Brava! software. The Microsoft Windows-based viewing, annotation, and redaction software has improved support for Unicode characters and helps users enter markup text both right-to-left and left-to-right. The upgraded redaction tools help users redact an entire page or range of pages, redact a list of names, or find and redact all text between specific phrases. Full release here.

Planet Data Upgrades Cerulean Engine

Planet Data has upgraded its Cerulean Engine, a litigation support and document management processing engine, to CE.2009. Full release here.

Anacomp's CaseProduction 2.0

CaseProduction 2.0 is the upgraded version of Anacomp’s production module for the company’s CaseLogistix litigation review software.

Post-production load file regeneration helps users recreate the file used to import images and coding into a database without having to rerun the entire production.

Full release here.

ePIC LDS rebrands to eTera Consulting

ETERA Consulting, a  provider of litigation and legal management programs to law firms, corporations and the federal government, states the decision to change its name was prompted by its continued growth and expansion. Read more here.

(See also, Solutions Penalty Box (right nav bar) — M.B.)

Wave's Trident Pro integrates with iFramework

iFramework's namesake software can now provide metrics on tasks being performed within Wave Software's Trident Pro, thus giving project managers the ability to control EDD projects, reports both companies. Here for full release. 

Informative Graphics & ADS

Under terms of the agreement Advanced Data Systems is offering Informative Graphic's entire line of Redact-It products. Included in the Redact-It suite is Redact-It Desktop, Redact-It Enterprise and Redact-It for Kofax. The software helps users reduce the time it takes to redact, review and release documents for public access. Full release.

Digital Reef partners with Anacomp

Through this partnership Anacomp leverages its CaseLogisitix software with Digital Reef's data discovery and management software offering law firms advanced document connection, selection, reduction, analysis and early case assessment. Press release

First Advantage Opens Indian EDD Facility

First Advantage Corp. Litigation Consulting unit has opened a full-service data processing and hosting center in Bangalore, India. Managed by senior director Jon Shaman, the e-discovery processing center, offers attorney staffing for document review using the company's Global RPM software. Access press release here.

Man Blames Child Porn on his Cat

In a strange variation of the "dog ate my homework" a 48 year old man in Jensen Beach, Florida, blamed his cat for the child pornography on his computer. Mr. Griffin was arrested after police somehow found over 1,000 child porn mages on his computer. According to the Associated Press report, Griffin told deputies that his cat jumped on the computer keyboard while he was downloading music. He said that he had left the room and when he returned found "strange things" on his computer. Griffin claims that his cat frequently stepped on his keyboard. The accused was obviously telling the truth as the photo clearly corroborates his story. Still, the Florida police did not believe him! They may even have impounded the cat too, who is a known convicted feline. I'll let you imagine a few other funny remarks. Anyway, Mr. Griffin was charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography, which is no laughing matter. He is now in Martin County, Florida jail and is likely to be there for a long time unless he posts a $250,000 bond.

And They Said We're Pretty, Too

You know those press releases we get nearly every day, usually touting something like, "George Socha said 'Bless you'  when some EDD provider's CEO sneezed at a conference thus anointing them the industry's leading provider of e-discovery services?  Sure you do.  It's marketing, and so we forgive some hyperbole and spin.  It's a big, competitive field, and able marketers have to find a way to keep their client's names above the fold.

But I got one today that made me laugh out loud.  This one said that the client (why name them--it's not like we can tell them apart, right?), "a leading provider of electronic discovery, document review and litigation management consulting for corporate legal departments, insurance companies and law firms, has announced that the U.S. Department of Commerce has certified the company as compliant with both the U.S.-European Union and the U.S.-Switzerland Safe Harbor Frameworks." 

Folks, Safe Harbor is a self-certification program.  The Department of Commerce doesn't certify as compliant anyone on the Safe Harbor list.  In fact, the listing clearly states, "In maintaining the list, the Department of Commerce does not assess and makes no representations to the adequacy of any organization's privacy policy or its adherence to that policy."  Check it out. 

So start your Monday off right and certify yourself as anything you'd like: Industry leader, thought leader, bandleader, leiderhosen, deity.  It doesn't matter. It's marketing! 

Kazeon Introduces eDiscovery Domino Manager

Kazeon Systems has announced its ability to natively manage e-discovery for Lotus Domino as part of its 4th generation e-discovery software. Its software helps users cull by custodian, domain, and date range for e-mails and documents in Domino. Full release here.

Magellan's Releases qd documents

Magellan’s Law Corporation has released qd documents Professional Discovery Edition, a tool for handling litigation discovery materials, including coded databases, text, and images. Full release here.

Forensic Consulting Moves to Downtown Phoenix

With a state-of-the-art security system offering fire-resistant walls and motion activated surveillance cameras, Forensic Consulting CEO K.J. Kuchta, states the company's new 2,500 square foot data center rivals Fort Knox.  Full press release.