Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R & S U R V E Y R E S U L T S | 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 & C O R P O R A T E L E G A L D E P A R T M E N T S 4 director level (and who do not learn about and/ or participate in the survey) may be more in- tune to virtual events. I have heard the younger professionals think differently about being virtual and don't really differentiate between meeting in person or virtual meetings. Everyone seeks more knowledge about analytical and software tools (45%). There is value with software certifications (i.e. Relativity) and professional organization credentials (e.g. ACEDS) with the remainder of achievements being topical. To quote one response, the desire is to "show you know about what you do" not general skill building or foundational knowledge - real nuts and bolts for useful, practical abilities. The theme for me with this year's survey is Core Competencies. With technology around new data sources and the software to handle them traveling at such a fast pace, there is significant value in enabling standard foundational processes within the emerging technology space. Across the board Cost Recovery showed a leading response with "a hybrid model where cost recovery is sought but is not a business function of the firm". That tracks with the increase of cloud software/service providers. I also appreciate that the lack of specificity in the available responses helps "bucket" the choices where we designed them to be - a general statement about whether firms are setting expectations around cost and profit of the litigation and practice support services. There are firms that excel at the business of litigation support, however the vast majority of the firms, and especially those under 400 attorneys, would not be in a position of running an ancillary business in addition to the practice of law. When I first began my paralegal / litigation support career the software was the cost of doing business and we have seen that fall to the wayside with the increased use of software and services providers. Now, cost recovery at any level is accepted the standard. In House Services There were really no surprises in the survey results pertaining to the services litigation support professionals provide to their firms. We organized the survey using the EDRM, so I have included that graphic below for reference. In hitting the high notes with services routinely provided in house – across the board that included most services. Forensic collections is the outlier – exactly where it should be (IMHO). Few, if any, firms have the abilities (or I L T A ' S 2 0 2 1 L I T I G A T I O N & P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T S U R V E Y R E S U L T S hopefully inclination) to staff examiners to perform and authenticate forensic collections or examinations. The billing for in house services is also tracking to traditional methods – for all the emerging tech in the litigation and practice support space, we do like to hunker down with the billable hour. There was a bit of a spread for some of the services with per gigabyte charges, but hourly billing increased for consultative services across the EDRM workflow from Identification through presenting. Out Sourcing Overall there are larger numbers at either end of the survey choices - most are under 10% or 70-100% with just a few in the middle. That completely jibes with the trend for an "all or nothing" approach at this small to medium size firm strata where our results live this year. This also correlates with the hybrid cost recovery model being most used – few firms do it all and it shows a leaning to out source all or none with the hybrid billing. We did include the questions about IaaS and SaaS this year to see where firms are leaning – the size firms responding to the survey were at 12% outsourcing Infrastructure as a Service -- that is about half of the 2020 response, but we had more

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