Survey Shows Surge in E-Discovery Work at Law Firms and Corporations

http://ow.ly/c3BRN


An article by Monica Bay posted on law.com on the LTN webpage.

This article discusses the results of the recently released survey taken by the Cowen Group.

The article states, "

Writes managing partner David Cowen, in the executive summary: "2012 has been a year of progress and promise for e-discovery professionals." The survey, of 88 law firm and corporate law department professionals, found that 70 percent of law firms reported an increase in workload for their litigation support and e-discovery departments. That figure, says Cowen, is a sharp rise from the 2Q 2009 report, where only 42 percent of firms reported increases. Corporate law departments followed suit, with 77 percent of respondents also reporting workload spikes.

Bolstering the prediction, 55 percent of corporate and 62 percent of firm respondents said they "anticipate outsourcing a significant amount of e-discovery to third-party providers (with some organizations expected to do both)."" A link to further information about the Cowen group

The article further mentions that 50 percent of firms indicate they intend to spend more on technology in the next 3 months, which was up from only 31 percent in 2010.

The article also provides comments about the findings in the survey by top eDiscovery experts: George Socha; Matthew Blake; David Kearney; and Ralph Losey.  Many of the comments mention that outsourcing of eDiscovery services is likely to continue, for a myriad of reasons.

Mr. Losey's comments are provided as follows, ""I'm not at all surprised by the outsourcing prediction, and we are not talking here about outsourcing jobs overseas," said Ralph Losey, a partner at Jackson Lewis, based in Orlando, Fla. "We are talking about outsourcing to U.S. vendors the non-legal e-discovery work that law firms, or corporations, had been trying to do themselves. That is a smart move as these functions get more and more complex and expensive.""