Digital White Papers

51 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER LITIGATION AND PRACTICE SUPPORT How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Ediscovery Managed Services As the realization crept over me that there were no viable solutions within my comfortable worldview, I began to doubt myself. Geing the required infrastructure and staff would be a huge cost and a big headache, and I started to wonder if my IS director was right. The managed services model might have something going for it aer all. Perhaps good planning, documentation and a near-obsessive- compulsive need to have control over the whole solution might suffice. Or I might find a partner. A New Hope Partnering with people internally was well-established in our firm; we involved a mix of aorneys and staff of varying levels and departments in choosing the new soware. An external partnership, however, still seemed like something from another galaxy. Beating a borrowed drum, I insisted that we engage with the vendor regularly and view them as an extension of our internal team. Our new partner would provide technical guidance, manage the infrastructure and reduce daily grunt work. We could rise above low-level data maintenance and focus on maer-specific strategies and solution designs. Holding my nose, "partnership" was in every sentence I uered. Frequent calls with and a consistent torrent of emails from the vendor during months of implementation established that this engagement was, at least for me, a new ontology altogether. A dozen years since graduate school, this felt like my first rodeo. Our managed services provider responded and helped bridge our two organizations by establishing regular targeted calls with the firm's implementation team; designing, redraing and sharing documentation; and tweaking and reworking various objects and workflows. Months of implementation turned quickly into a rollout, and a boatload of support landed on our doorstep. During the rollout weeks, we worked together and clocked many hours of training sessions. Technicians from the managed services provider trained aorneys, paralegals and project assistants; ran demos for our tech support and administrative staff; met with the ediscovery team to answer many burning questions; and broke bread with us. What menschen! It dawned on me that maybe the vendor was not evil. Months of implementation turned quickly into a rollout, and a boatload of support landed on our doorstep.

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