Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | L I T I G A T I O N A N D P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T 4 T H E L I T I G A T I O N S U P P O R T S U R V E Y - J O U R N E Y A N D D E S T I N A T I O N the survey to focus on the topics that are relevant, highlight what the industry finds interesting and responsive. The unintentional impact of the survey is the year 2020: this year's survey questions were finalized very early in the year. It does not specifically call out the driving forces of change and the huge disruption caused by COVID-19. Between the format adjustments and the impact of 2020 on responders, we hope the responses are useful in planning for 2021 (such as it is). The demographics for the survey were impacted by the low response rate with only a couple of the 77 responders outside of law firms. As we begin working on the 2021 survey, we are very interested in knowing your thoughts about the usefulness of the survey and we welcome your feedback. It may be time to redesign the survey to address the issues in shorter, more topical surveys or otherwise sunset this format. Some highlights: • Security in transferring data out of litigation support department remains a priority – with 78% of the respondents defaulting to, or having policies in place for, the encryption of all media. • Collections are diminishing - clients are more than likely using their tools (e.g. O365) to provide data to law firms and/or client data has one of two likely properties – it is either collectable by the client's IT department or with minimal law firm intervention, or it is fodder for outsourced forensic collection. • The topics on which teams are continuing to train personnel remained consistent from 2018 to 2020 – 82% remain focused on e-discovery best practices, followed by software specific training at 69%, the discovery process and the litigation process at 47% and 44% respectively. Relativity certifications and ACEDS' Certified E-Discovery Specialist (CEDS) certification remain the most valued certifications. • There's been a significant uptick in respondent's use of machine learning technologies over the past year (whether internally or outsourced) – from 62% in 2019 to 74%. Interestingly, the number one reason machine learning is not used is that it is "not needed." • In order to get more specific information, we adjusted the responses for the question relating to how often litigation support departments / teams / groups outsource processes across the EDRM. Previously, it was an answer within ranges with 0-25% being the lowest value that could be selected. We modified the question to include '< 10%' to get more detailed information. The results show overwhelmingly that 'less than 10%' was the response to every question. Going forward, we will be fine-tuning the approach for the 2021 Litigation Support Survey, we hope you find the responses helpful in planning and that information it contains helps substantiate your knowledge about trends from an industry perspective. ILTA

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