Digital White Papers

ILTA WHITE PAPER: JUNE 2014 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 13 E-DISCOVERY EVOLUTION: STREAMLINING THE DAUNTING DISCOVERY PROCESS Offers Ease-of User, Low Cost, and Less Onerous IT Demands for E-Discovery," emphasizes that in other industries, some have estimated the initial cost of hardware and software might represent only about 25 percent of the long-term costs of maintaining such a complex solution. Is it time for more secure tools? Security should always be a key consideration for protecting sensitive client information during discovery. In "5 Tips for Using the Cloud to Conduct E-Discovery," Daniel Lim posits that from an efficiency standpoint, the ideal offering for a portfolio approach allows legal professionals to access documents anywhere, in a centralized online environment that supports multi-matter management (e.g., using the exact same hosted version of a document in repeat or concurrent litigation without reprocessing it). Because the natural implementation of this kind of approach is in some form of cloud environment, vetting the security of existing and potential solutions raises some important considerations: • Private vs. Public Cloud Environments. Private clouds, hosted behind the firewall of an organization or vendor, are often more secure because organizations have more control over preservation and collection. In a public cloud environment, an organization might not know geographically where its data reside, raising international compliance challenges. • Planning for Disaster. Data encryption is critical. Your organization's applicable service provider should be well-versed in uptime commitments and recovery protocols. Vet the certifications and physical security of a service provider's data center — in theory, vendors are best positioned to build in, maintain and update state-of-the-art security measures but will not commit to them if you do not request it. Notably, solutions that complement portfolio management by storing only one instance of a document for multi-matter management also reduce the amount of auditing and security associated with duplicative data hosting stages. Has an internal assessment been made of the repeatability of existing processes? An internal assessment often leads to the most compelling reason for organizations to consider adopting a portfolio e-discovery approach. Most organizations approach e-discovery projects as they arise, so they're continuously reinventing the wheel. Decisions must be made about whether existing processes are good enough or additional tools are necessary. Even within subgroups like "review tools," organizations must decide which tools are needed for particular projects (e.g., keyword search and a predictive coding tool with active learning) while ensuring any new solutions interact well with what The ideal offering for a portfolio approach allows legal professionals to access documents anywhere, in a centralized online environment that supports multi-matter management.

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