The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/34686
Discovery T 2020 A High-Stakes Tale of Survival of the Fittest by Howard J. Reissner of Planet Data 98 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer hough the world of discovery as we know it today — with its many forms of electronically stored information (ESI) — seems to have always existed, it has been this way for only a little over a decade. Prior to the late 1990s, information for discovery requests was provided by scanning, coding and reviewing large quantities of paper. Today, during the modern ESI era, required information has exploded in volume and complexity. Yesterday’s collection of data in gigabytes is today’s terabytes and tomorrow’s petabytes. All of this has occurred in a difficult economic environment where corporate legal budgets and staffs have been reduced. The natural result has been a new generation of technology that allows massive quantities of complex data to be stored, accurately processed, indexed, made searchable and reviewed in a cost-effective manner. As we enter the second decade of ESI discovery, the knowledge and tools required to compete will continue to evolve at an accelerating pace. Running Just to Stand Still We are already witnessing the rearrangement of the deck chairs in our industry. We are continuously reminded that leading-edge workflows and processes can become dinosaurs in only a few short years. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the playing field will shrink even further between