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 & P R A C T I C E S U P P O R T 10 I L T A ' S 2 0 2 3 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 Predictions for the Future of Collections by Monique Sever When it comes to electronic evidence collection, many of the same questions are raised by the legal team. Should the client or the legal team collect the documents? What documents should be collected? Where are the documents? And the most often asked question, can the client just send us all their documents? However, the questions that we have dealt with for years are beginning to change. With the advent of technology such as generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), we are seeing, and will be seeing, a significant increase in data types we have yet to fully understand. In years past, the collection stage of the document discovery aspect of litigation or investigations was typically a series of questionnaires or interviews with custodians to determine what data existed, where it resided in what formats, and whom to target or collect from. Most of us in eDiscovery are well-versed in this type of collection practice. And in years past, we either did a mixture of self-collection, targeted (non-forensic) collection, or forensic collection. And we wanted our discovery tools to assist with that. In this year's survey, we saw that participants were relying on their eDiscovery review tool to assist with data collection. What surprised me more, was that the number was still relatively low, and the fact that it has taken the eDiscovery industry this long to even put out a product(s) to address this need. While there are tools that assist with eDiscovery collection, having to use that tool, gather the data, transfer the data, and then process the data in yet another tool, results in extra steps. Having a built-in tool to assist with data collection, and then being able to use the same tool to process and cull that data, just seems a natural and useful extension. This year, we have the added issue of matters such as Gen AI, which we touched upon in the survey questions. In the future, we will be utilizing Gen AI to create fact patterns and chronologies/timelines and link that information back to the actual documents. Gen AI will be able to create summaries (faster than a human) of testimony and generate follow-up questions or issues to be further explored by the legal team. The work to refine and craft nuanced legal arguments and case strategies will be the job of the legal team. It will be interesting to see what other things we will use Gen AI for in the eDiscovery world. One thing is certain, we need to get on board and those not yet using the existing eDiscovery technology will struggle to deal with discovery in any form. ILTA

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