5 Easy Steps To Becoming An In-house Electronic Discovery Guru

 So I've been speaking with a number of Attorneys & Support Staff (who I'm hoping will chime in publicly on my Linkedin eDiscovery 101 postings) and the consensus is that Litigation/Practice Support are not the go to guys and gals for electronic discovery advice.  That's like a law firm going to outside counsel for legal advice after paying top dollar for legal professionals to come work at their firm.  So I've come up with a few tips to help in-house support staff become better go to people for electronic discovery matters that can "get them in the room" at the inception of cases.  These steps do not come in any particular order so apply them at will.

The 1st Step: Don't be the at your desk non-social lit support person that attorneys can't tell the difference if you're from lit support, MIS or work in the library.  Be proactive at work.  Whether you're a manager or a specialist, check with docket and find out what new cases are going on.  Project the discovery need and send a note to the associate(s) on the case about your interest.  Maybe identify some helpful links about eDiscovery in current events (cases, blogs, opinions) that may be helpful to them.  Let them know what your in-house capabilities are and your knowledge on the subject.  Assume nothing and expect everything.

The 2nd Step: Go beyond your in-house processing capabilities.  So you have a few licenses of Law but what do you really know about load file manipulation?  What do you really know about Pre-Discovery processing options that your Law Software can't provide?  Instead of talking to sales reps from service providers about where they're going to take you for lunch, talk to the tech people.  They're pretty fluent on file manipulation.  This may seem a little odd to some but he who can create a load file from scratch in textpad is hands down the stronger lit support go to guy.  

The 3rd Step:  Don't just read read read...apply apply apply!  If you have some down time set up demo's with all the latest software providers out there.  Create a memo book about the functionality of each product.  Talk about the pro's and cons (be careful here because most providers won't tell you in-depth about their weaknesses).  Ask them what platforms do they think are similar to theirs.  Take extensive notes and most importantly apply them to your in-house capabilities.  See how you can substitute functionality you don't have with functionality you do have.

The 4th Step:  Find out which attorneys have had run-ins with eDiscovery good or bad.  Speak with them about it.  This is a good step because it lets the attorneys know who you are and it lets them know how interested you are in understanding and addressing the strengths and weaknesses of the firm.  Figure out ways to address the weaknesses and come up with a strategy (start out small) to educate attorneys a little better.  One way to do this is to take a small survey and get about 5 attorneys who would be interested in attending a 45 minute product demonstration. Create an official title for this meeting like "eDiscovery 101 meeting" (keep it catchy) and set it on the firms intranet (this way when the next meeting comes you can call it "the 2nd Monthly eDiscovery 101 Meeting or something that catches other attorneys eyes). Setup a conference room, get the selected vendor to come educate about their product (not sell) and your off to the races.  Make sure that you are having providers come to educate not sell and be very upfront about this.  After several meetings you will see how educated attorneys and yourself become but most importantly you have established yourself within the firm.

The 5th Step:  Be honest.  Don't be like the sales reps who pound on you selling you the dream of they can do it all.  Be frank with your colleagues and let them know what you can and cant do but the key is making sure that whatever you can't do you can definitely get done.  Anyone can offer to buy anything that's out there to get something done so be creative and always remain cost effective.  Remember technology is always on the rise and the moment you convince the firm to spend thousands of dollars on one solution a new one that's probably much better will come out a few months later.

The best eDiscovery in-house people are the ones that can get anything done with very little commitment of investment.  There are some great inexpensive tools out there.  The best way to begin is look at the EDRM chart, start at the beginning and address every phase in its simplest form.  Once you can do that you can dig into the more complex angles of each.  

I hope this was helpful and if any of you need more insight or help developing your strategy I'm just a phone call away. - Anthony Martinez,President & CEO - Litigation Logic            

Comments

[Amy Lechner]

I'm adding you to my RSS feed for e-discovery blogs, and looking forward to seeing further content from you. Great article, thanks!

[John W. Akerman]

Looks like a promising blog. I look forward to reading future posts.

[Rob Robinson]

Congratulations on the new blog and I wish you/your firm the greatest of success. I certainly will be following your posts.

[Jerry Bui]

Great start! Best wishes from a fellow blawger.
http://www.jerrybui.com/edd

[Bill]

Great but what if you are coming from an IT perspective/background?

[Anthony Martinez]

Bill that's a great point! You're giving everyone some insight into the next blog :). Information Technology (IT) backgrounds are actually more advantageous because they are more inclined to understand the "technical" behind the scenes of cause and effect. Attorneys know the who, what and when but they rarely know the where, why and how.

Understanding the litigation life cycle begins at the Information Management stage which is right up your alley and then moves to the Identification, Preservation and Collection stages. We then move into the Pre-Discovery (Processing, Review & Analysis) & Post Processing (Production & Presentation) Stages.

Your learning curb is truly understanding Records Management, Retention Policies and the purpose of Litigation Holds because anything that violates that will play into another "why" factor that opens the door to spoliation issues and adverse inference.

If this sounds like anything other than English to you start with these simple basic understandings Records Management, Retention Policies and the purpose of Litigation Holds. That will start you into the Identification, Preservation and Collection stages. Once you truly understand this the other stages will come naturally through inquisitiveness.

Feel free to reach me offline for any questions you may have.

-Anthony

[John Randall]

Here is a list of areas I would consider anyone have to garner more skills. This is not to be taken as legal advice. It is just a few areas where someone can improve on their EDD skills.

1> Know the EDRM model. Without having an understanding of Records Management, Litigation Holds, Retention Policies, questions to ask in relation to ESI. You will never become a guru. Know the litigation lifecycle.
Understand fully the issues with keyword v concept searching. Understand fully areas such as metadata, hashing, de-duplication, accuracy, native v tiff...etc.

2> Stay up to speed on new technology. Read up on what is going on in the marketplace. If you have not done so sign up for the numerous lit support boards on the net. Get a pulse for what is upcoming on the horizon. Such as sharepoint and this new wave of technology.

3> Be able to talk to your paralegals and attorneys on these areas. They need this knowledge from those in lit support at firms. Be able to explain it to them so they can understand it. Have at least a bit of inner trainer in you. Be confident that they want to hear what you have to say. That what you know will help them.

4> Stay up to speed on EDD caselaw. This is essential to again consulting and advising in your firm when they come to you for help. Not in just a specific area as say caselaw on production. Have an understanding on recent caselaw thru the EDRM model.

5> If you do processing in-house understand the pitfalls associated with it. Be able to advise on native v tiff. Understand the pitfalls of keyword searching, Know what recall v precision is. Know the strenghts and weaknesses of the products you are using in-house.

If you send all data to a service provider make them prove to you that they know what they are doing. Does the vendor have project managers on staff? How easily accessible are their tech staff.

6> Create test data sets to give to service providers. This is the only way to know how well your vendor truly can handle the data. It is tedious work but audit this data. Create a spreadsheet of every document loaded. Know which documents are duplicates, log where the deep e-mail nesting and embedded documents are. Remember sales can say anything but the finished product is what is important here.

7> Have analytical and troubleshooting skills. There may be times where a service provider does not give you everything that youj need. Or an attorney or paralegal at the last moment changes the instructions when it is mere hours from getting a deliverable from your service provider. What if you received a horrible database from the opposing side. By having troubleshooting skills you may be able to fix it and save the firm money by not having to send it to a service provider. Learn text manipulaton utilities like TextPad and UltraEdit they are your friends. Learn how to create batch files.

8> Learn everything you can about online review. From the products on the market to the key players. Learn what vendors also offer a review tool if you send them work. Test out those tools. Have an understanding of hosting as well as programs on the market such as Clearwell, CaseLogistix and Catalyst. Be able to offer insights into the review strategy so the review time can be cut short.

9> Learn the ins and outs of Production. Make sure you emphasize that not a single document is going out where it should be priviledged. Has every potential document been reviewed. Did your firm have a good search strategy in place? Understand what a clawback agreement is. Learn more about priv logs.

10> Understand utilities you can have in-house to help with electronic discovery. Have an EDD toolkit. There are some programs on the market that are minimal. Will they help your firm? Do you want to deNIST before sending to a vendor? Want to know what is in an e-mail store beforehand?

These are just a few tips to help you become your firm's Yoda.

John Randall

[J.Fleming]

I am a Certified Records Manager with 20 years experience as a paralegal, but have been out of the law firm environment for a few years. I would like to become more educated in the technical "how to" aspects of E-Discovery. Can any of you tell me what some of the more popular tools currently being used by law firms for E-Discovery are? Thank you!

[John Randall]

Law firms use all types of tools in dealing with e-discovery. Some actually do processing in-house and as such use a third party program such as LAW, Discovery Cracker, Cricket Box, E-Capture, Needle Finder, Discover-E...etc. Large firms may use sharepoint and have something like Matter Space. This may become the norm in the next few years for large firms.

These programs are not the be all and end all of products for e-discovery. There is not a single product on the market that handles every aspect of e-discovery. With that being said there are other utilities that firms have to better streamline their processes. This goes well with Point #10 I made in my last comment.

From a forensic sound copying point of view SafeCopy by PinPoint Labs is one of stronger products on the market. Firms may also have robust programs such as EnCASE, FTK oolkit, Paraben...etc in-house. These are computer forensic programs.

Some firms like to filter their data before sending it to a service provider. And as such a program like PG PinPoint comes in handy. It can filter out system files and non-processable data based on a NIST list. National Institute of Science and Technology releases a quarterly MD5 and SHA-1 hash list. PG PinPoint is also a program that can de-duplicate. It has an array of uses for a firm and is another product I would recommend.

Another aspect of filtering is called .PST regeneration. Law firms would use a program like Trident Pro, Discovery Attender...etc to load .PST or even .NSF files to run some searches, de-duplicate and then create a new .PST file. A few things to keep in mind about using this type of technology. When creating a new .PST the old entry ID's for Outlook will no longer be available. So it is best to export out a list of old and new entry ID's. Also have some sort of idea of document count's for e-mail stores. Why? At times some of these programs have problems with e-mail accuracy. EDD third party Processing programs suffer from the same fate.

My opinion is to never ever use a migration tool when converting .NSF files to .PST. Always have them processed natively.

Some firms at times need more information than just what metadata provides. In some instances for a large case file system metadata just does not cut it. With that in mind a program like ALCoder comes in handy. This is an automated coding program that reads the contents of every file and exports out a coding load file to import into a database.

I could now talk about the different type of online review tools and programs that firms use but that sounds like a topic for a different date.

Again these are just a few programs and utilities to help with ediscovery. With all programs understand the strengths and weaknesses with using each of the programs. Having some of these programs is great but really what good is it if the employees running the programs know little about electronic discovery.

John Randall
President
Randall Consulting