Top 10 e-discovery trends for 2009
Pretty much everybody agrees that 2009 will be key on how the current economic crisis develops. It will certainly change many aspects of our personal and professional lives. And when trying to identify how the e-discovery market will evolve, the folks at Clearwell Systems have produced a list of ten predictions for this year. They respond mainly to greater financial and legal stress, calling for more collaboration, control and proactive readiness in the matter.
So here’s the list, via MarketWatch. Enjoy:
1. Government Investigations Increase: the economic tensions and increase in high-profile scandals will lead to a natural rise in government investigations, compliance audits and data requests.
2. Corporations Take More Control Over e-Discovery: e-discovery processes go “in-house” for having more control and reducing costs. Organizations will then see that a proper proactive approach will bring cost-reduction opportunities for organizations when an e-discovery process takes place.
3. Industry Push For Collaboration: improving collaboration efforts will reduce costs and conflicts.
4. Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) 502 Helps Automated Reviews: the use of automated analytical tools will be on the rise, reducing costs and lowering the time and money associated with inadvertent disclosure of privileged information.
5. “Showing Your Work” Becomes Mandatory: technology must be transparent and auditable, with organizations in the need of not only showing but also proving transparency and good practice.
6. Solving Colloquial E-Discovery Is Top of Mind: new technologies such as voicemail, instant messaging, web 2.0 and others must be included in the e-discovery process. Trustworthy auditing becomes the key aspect here.
7. Global Economic Downturn Drives Global E-Discovery: e-discovery will go international and therefore more complex. E-discovery technologies will be in the need to address privacy and data protection issues, in line with international compliance requirements.
8. Information Stores Will be Mapped: in line with prediction #1, there will be an increasing need for organizations to clearly map their electronically stored information. This means the capacity of retaining, archiving, searching and producing whatever information is required.
9. Integration Happens Across the EDRM Framework: integration will be the key for e-discovery technologies this year.
10. Information Management Shows Positive ROI: proper information management is no longer related solely to good practices, but will also have a clear cost-saving effect. Being unprepared and having unmanaged data stores will bring enormous costs if an e-discovery process comes into play. The key here is having a proper forensic readiness approach.
Tags: e-discovery, forensic readiness, predictions