subject: The E-discovery Software Market: Thorny Challenges, But Big Opportunities [print this page] The market for e-discovery software solutions has evolved in the past several years but it still continues to evolve, as do the needs of the users who want more sophisticated products as technology also evolves. There's also a very volatile marketplace, with competitors left and right merging and acquiring one another as the market sorts itself out and determines leaders in this niche.
The biggest challenge is in actually now creating a product that keeps up with the demands of lawyers who insist upon faster and more convenient ways of collecting and organizing large volumes of information during the often tedious discovery process. E-discovery is typically reserved for civil and criminal litigation involving organizations that have massive databases of electronically stored information from email servers, in-house networks and also in the "cloud." They want a way to very quickly sift through mountains of data and pull the nuggets of information that are relevant to their cases.
Part of the problem is that lawyers don't just need data; what's important is the "meta-data" associated with electronic records. For example, a Word document is made up of the words typed in the actual text document, but meta-data would include embedded information in the program that shows when a document was created, when the last version was saved, who created it and what changes were made over time. A good e-discovery solution will help attorneys access and organize that kind of information quickly.
Meta-data also can very importantly apply to email communications - who sent what, when it was sent, who received it, where the message was later forwarded, who's on the distribution list. As a huge volume of inter-office and client communications takes place via email, it's critical to have a way to manage and view what is essentially a digital "paper trail" of discussions.
Another major hurdle is that electronic information is created and stored on all kinds of different media and hardware. The first challenge an attorney has is in securing all of the different ways the data can exist, such as on company servers, off-site third party server farms, and on individual computers, discs, thumb drives and other devices. And once all of that is located and corralled, it all has to be run through the collection and organization process. Lawyers want a product that can essentially be applied to all of these disparate sources and pulls the data they need.
A newer and thornier challenge is in how to collect data from social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn. Increasingly discovery has taken attorneys down the path of needing to see what might have been posted or communicated via the social networks. This raises a host of logistical and privacy concerns. There does not yet appear to be a vendor who has tackled this relatively recent wrinkle in e-discovery.
Regulatory and judicial activity creates yet another layer of complexity. A vast array of rulings and decisions handed down by judges and government agencies impacts how discovery is conducted and what evidence in what formats is deemed admissible in court. Add to this that American agencies and courts are one animal; international bodies are another. There is evidence of a trend toward more international interest in e-discovery, which means the potential for varying interpretations and regulations will result in the lack of a uniform standard of e-discovery. This could make it difficult for a vendor to develop a one-size-fits-all software solution.
The challenges are many and they straddle both the complex worlds of law and information technology. However those vendors who can most efficiently address the difficulties and demands of the constantly evolving e-discovery software market stand a chance to win considerable business
