eDiscovery in America – A Legend in the Making

http://ow.ly/bZiUc

An article by Christy Burke posted on the Legal IT Professionals website, including contributions from Barry Murphy of the eDJ Group. The article focuses on the upcoming July 4th celebration, and traces the history of eDiscovery in the United States. The article also discusses current eDiscovery trends, and makes predictions about the future impact that electronically stored information will have upon the legal profession.

The article states, "Like periods of America’s own history, eDiscovery started out as a Wild West frontier with little governance and lots of pioneers and cowboys staking out new territory. Barry recalls that eDiscovery became a major factor toward the late 1990s and 2000 as several phenomenon converged, including the growing domination of email for business communication versus paper, scanning technology reaching its maturity, and the US government increasingly accepting digital images of items such as checks instead of requiring paper originals."

The article further mentions, "In contrast, Barry explains that a typical Western European company’s goal is to protect the privacy of employees in whichever countries they are based. However, the US requires these companies to comply with American rules when operating in its jurisdictions. Basically, if another country’s privacy rules conflict with US ones, the foreign entity can decide to violate rules of the US or its own country – either way, it will incur the wrath of one of the courts – it’s a catch-22."

1. The article also provides narrative around the following topics:
2. Evolution of Cloud Computing
3. Trend Toward Defensible Expiration and Deletion 
4. Rise of Analytical Technology
5. Lawyer Jobs in Litigation Review Dwindle or Migrate
6. Battle of the eDiscovery Credentials

In addition, the article discusses future issues that will further shape the eDiscovery landscape.  The article states, "US history is full of great tales of victory, and the eDiscovery industry is clearly a legend in the making. How many other business sectors have continued to grow exponentially in the face of an international recession? Very few. Time will tell as to whether eDiscovery will continue to grow as a separate entity, level off, or eventually be absorbed into larger companies like IBM and EMC that do enterprise content management and information governance. For now, we can be grateful for controversy and excitement and dollars that eDiscovery has brought into the legal arena. After all, the Fourth of July is never any fun without some fireworks!"