Synopsis Part 3: Review costs drive budgets to improve collection, preservation and litigation readiness
Synopsis Part 2: Educating IT, Legal and CIOs can help control costs and bridge departments
Synopsis Part 1: Legal risk management requires a corporate strategy, mindset and commitment
Electronic data discovery Interview – Stephen “Steve” Whetstone, Esq.,
Vice President, Client Development and Strategy; public presenter and
evangelist for Stratify, a division of Iron Mountain Digital (NYSE:IRM). (Part 3 of 3) (Part 2 of 3) (Part 1 of 3)
By Joshua Konkle writing for dcig.com
www.dcig.com
Joshua Konkle: What is causing the need for intelligent preservation/collection by the corporation?
Steve Whetstone: Traditionally, clients generally would look to their lawyers to manually sift through documents or electronic data, even if it meant having to pay them for it. As data volumes began to grow, lawyers and clients used metadata filtering (by date range, sender, receiver, etc.) or keyword or Boolean search to try to narrow the data sets. But, those techniques – particularly search, which requires knowing a lot about a matter before it begins, and all synonyms, acronyms, code words, and misspellings – are fraught with peril. In addition, the cost to manually review data can be exorbitant. It could cost as much as $50,000 for an attorney manually to review a single gigabyte of data. Many matters today involve tens, hundreds and sometimes even thousands of gigabtyes of data. Technology can filter and organize data much more rapidly and accurately than lawyers could ever do it by themselves.
Joshua Konkle: There appears to be some gap between what legal teams require to support electronic data discovery and the capabilities available today in data management technology. What advice do you have as a vendor trying to assist their clients in addressing litigation readiness challenges?
Steve Whetstone: Actually, I think the gap is closing, but not all firms and companies know this. Too many law firms still rely on stale technologies to get the difficult job done. So, more than anything else, I evangelize to both firms and companies that better (faster, more reliable, and, yes, cheaper) solutions exist. The companies warm to this message immediately. Law firms sometimes are cooler to the message. Old habits die hard, and there are a lot of reasons why law firms are slow to adopt newer and more advanced technologies. But, the paradigm is shifting, as many firms feel competitor and client pressures to do better.
Joshua Konkle: How are you dealing with the feedback loop of EDD tagging of data to affecting the records/information management?
Steve Whetstone: I think this is one of the next hills for the industry to climb, and we believe, with our Iron Mountain strategic alliance announced early last year then a corresponding acquisition in late 2007, we are in a prime position to leverage best of class data storage and archival systems with best of class data processing, analytics, and tagging. Stay tuned.
Interviewers Note: Thanks Steve we will stay tuned. The run up to LegalTech is going to be filled with lot’s of announcements and solutions addressing review cost containment by reducing total gigabytes and document-pages managed through processing and review. We are looking forward to the show and Stratify’s announcements.
Part 1 and 2 of DCIGs interview with Mr. Stephen “Steve” Whetstone appeared earlier this month.
Synopsis Part 1: Legal risk management requires a corporate strategy, mindset and commitment
Synopsis Part 2: Educating IT, Legal and CIOs can help control costs and bridge departments
If you would like to communicate with him directly, he can be reached at swhetstone (at) stratify.com or in his Boston, MA office at 617-330-2828.
DCIG, Inc publishes weekly interviews with legal professionals; click here for more eDiscovery interviews or sign up for the feed.