Digital White Papers

52 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER LITIGATION AND PRACTICE SUPPORT How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Ediscovery Managed Services Clearing the Air Internal ediscovery staff members aended a week of the soware developer's training but were far from experts. The vendor supplied more administrative training, walked us through alternate workflows, showed us tips and tricks to streamline tasks, and helped us in contractually obligatory ways. I suggested to our services provider that key operations staff aend our regular departmental meetings. This seemed unusual to them, but I thought it might pave the way for beer understanding of our queues, workflows and culture. Despite these calls, our firm's ediscovery staff was not satisfied. Weeks aer the rollout, gripes surfaced around a variety of issues, from being inundated with insubstantial messages to the requirement to follow formalities even in routine requests. Again, our managed services provider responded. Through meetings and teleconferences over a few weeks, our vendor partner ensured our concerns had been heard, understood and addressed. Ultimately, each partner gave on some points and held firm on others. A few months later, ire again grew among our internal team as they began to understand the application and our arrangement more fully. This time, however, the vendor reached out preemptively. Communication lines were reinforced, resources were reallocated, transparency was completely redefined and fees were even lowered. Since then, we have increased regular check-ins from one to four a week with additional touch points as needed, and we have overhauled the metrics reports. We have had two significant upgrades, tripled our storage requirements and switched data centers, all with few issues. Learning and Growing The partnership with our managed services provider has brought appreciable benefits to our firm. We did not have to make major infrastructure changes or add to the administrative headcount. Our partner brought significant experience to the table on day one, and internal teams have more resources to draw upon. Our partner also collaborates with us on workflows and helps us refine and expand our thought processes. Since our first annual review, I have been sold on managed services for ediscovery. However, everything is not sunshine and roses all the time. A major disaster occurred about a year into the partnership that had us virtually dead in the water for a few days, and other less urgent issues and problems have arisen from time to time. Even in those hoest of crises, communication from our vendor partner has been professional, receptive, forward-thinking, honest, humble and even warm. Our internal staff have taken a few pages from our partner's playbook in the form of tools, metrics, project management and communication. The partnership has forced us to up our game and exposed us to new ideas and ways of thinking and working, while we have pushed and pulled — and sometimes berated and badgered — our partner to do the same. As we look anew at the managed services market, I see that two years' growth outweighs a decade of experience and prejudice. I know beer what to look for in a partner, and I recognize that ediscovery and the cloud can exist in harmony. ILTA DAVID SIARNY David Siarny, EnCE, is eDiscovery Manager for Vedder Price P.C. He has worked for legal industry vendors and law firms since late 1999, solely in ediscovery and litigation support. An Eagle Scout and Cub Scout leader, David focuses on pragmatic, process-driven solutions to business and non-business challenges. Contact him at dsiarny@vedderprice.com.

• Cover