Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
More on Craig Ball's EDna Challege
May 2, 2011
I had a delightful conversation with Megan Miller of GGO about its Digital WarRoom product at ABA TECHSHOW. I've discussed our friend Craig Ball's EDna challenge before. I even (I don't think Megan knew this) blogged about whether the Digital WarRoom met the EDna challenge last year.
Though I don't too often allow vendors to speak in their own voice here, Megan wrote me such an extensive and thoughtful e-mail that I decided to make an exception. Here is a part of what she wrote:
"As promised, I’m following up to give you an update on GGO (Gallivan Gallivan O’Melia) and our Digital WarRoom product line.
GGO has been doing hosted review and e-discovery consulting on large complex matters for about 10 years. It was just last year that the company decided to expand the in-house platform and create a branded line of products.
Though Bill and Dan Gallivan (brothers, founders, who have roots in Attenex history) built the business on ‘big’ litigation/e-discovery, they have objected since day 1 to the “Per GB” pricing models for processing, on the premise that, once the technology is established and performing, processing a large batch of documents takes very little additional effort (and no additional technology) compared with processing a small batch. So our processing fees have always been set at a fixed rate per collection. By doing so we drastically reduce the high cost of processing. (A benefit to GGO is that, we did not build a high-expense operation on assumptions that per GB pricing would drive revenue growth. So the crazy price pressure affecting the volume-based vendors is not hurting us…). I truly see GGO as one of the industry’s best kept secrets.
In the course of establishing the Digital WarRoom platform and product line, Bill and Dan spent time with Craig Ball (among others) heard the ‘Edna Challenge’ story, and truly took it to heart.
They came away convinced that the natural course of e-discovery will have to be a democratization process that will make the process of gathering, searching and producing documents in e-discovery a process that is understandable, accessible, affordable, and friendly enough that can be done by attorneys and legal professionals without requiring deep technical expertise.
I joined GGO to lead the marketing effort in December 2010, as the company was doing final testing on Digital WarRoom Pro, the first product to meet the Edna Challenge.
We announced the product at Legaltech ’11, and brought it to ABA Techshow. We are seeing, though, that the potential uses for a single-user desktop e-discovery product are broader than just for “small and medium matters”. Litigators at larger firms can use it to do an early assessment of the documents from 3-5 key custodians, to help build case strategy and determine the identities of other custodians they should collect."
Now that some of my readers may have had the chance to try Digital WarRoom – what sayest thou? Does it indeed meet the EDna challege? Certainly the price is right at $895.00. And are there challengers that any of you have tried and liked?
Thanks Megan, for talking with me at TECHSHOW, and taking the time to write a thoughtful note. To answer another question you asked, I do think that the marketplace is putting enormous pressure on vendors to come up with small case e-discovery solutions – the sheer volume of lawyers who need less expensive ways to defensibly do e-discovery is enough to drive profits – and the "big guys" are not rushing to fill the void. A void always presents opportunity for someone smart enough to fill it.
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