E-Discovery is OUT, ME-Discovery is IN!

by Rob Fitzgerald

I was recently at an ECA (Early Case Assessment - for the acronym weary) presentation in Boston.  The neat thing was that there were many vendors in attendance.  Oftentimes people complain about this.  However, I found it very interesting to chat through lunch with the other attendees, listen to the presentation and the questions that were being asked.

As it is, I happened to agree with much of what the panel was discussing.  However, that's not what this blog is about.  After attending the event, I started to think more about ECA, lawyers, and their clients... and I've come to a conclusion: MY e-Discovery is more important than YOUR e-Discovery.  That's right.  If a party in a lawsuit is fully aware of the data they have BEFORE sinking neck-deep in a lawsuit, they can make educated, financially-driven decisions on how to handle the suit, using hard data to back them up.  The real question is: How is this accomplished?  Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Law firms need to move away from their historically siloed services model and create environments where employment, litigation, real estate, patent, contracts (and more) work together to provide "client-best" services.

2) Law firms need to embrace technology solutions and assist clients in making transitions into streamlined data management.  Psst!  Here is the trump card - when clients become parties to lawsuits, they rely on their lawyers, not IT personnel or accountants, to protect them.  Clients will listen to their attorneys.

3) Clients need to be encouraged to embrace technology solutions that will capture critical data.  This can be accomplished through direct conversations between legal counsel and their clients.  Off-the-shelf data segregation and network monitoring tools currently available today can help.

So, will these ideas take off?  I don’t know.  What I know is that clients are already frustrated with the amount of time and money litigation can take.  Many clients have been mis-educated on the legal process and do not understand how litigation works.  I also know that many law firms are looking for new ways to provide value-added services to clients.  I propose that we stop worrying about the information and data the other side has until AFTER we know what we have.  Let’s save clients money and put the ME in E-Discovery.  If law firms, their vendors, and clients can work together there will be ample opportunities to thrive.