Ride the Lightning

CLUELESS OR CLUED-UP? EDD READINESS SURVEY FROM XEROX

June 2, 2008

From our foxhole, the number of in-house counsel who are, as our British friends would say, “clued-up” about electronic discovery remains small. It was interesting to see that a survey commissioned by Xerox Litigation Services and reported today in Business Week indicates that companies are becoming increasing comfortable with EDD. 95% of respondents had faith in their company’s capacity to manage e-discovery.

To no one’s surprise, there were concerns about in-house review, including slow turnaround time, inadequate system support, lack of important features in software, and the inability of in-house IT staff to support the in-house document review system. The benefits of outsourcing e-discovery included cost-effectiveness (35%) and decreased processing time (53%). Since this is a vendor survey, you have to look askance at the conclusions just a bit. I find it hard to believe that it is generally more cost-effective to outsource, though I can well believe that outsourcing results in speedier results. The most interesting part of this survey, to me, was the obvious sense that companies are coming up to speed with EDD.

My caution would be that these are probably large companies – at the small to mid-size level, EDD still invokes terror and confusion. At a recent meeting with such a company, the CEO plaintively asked three times for his hand to be held throughout the process. The Goliaths of the world may have gotten more comfortable, but the Davids are still very skittish.

Hat tip to Joan Feldman for sending this item along.

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