Electronic discovery, or e-discovery, services collect and produce electronically stored information (EIS) for a law suit or investigation. Many companies, like CDS Legal, specialize in e-discovery services and can also assist in making the online data they collect ready for a lawsuit by redacting information, preserving data, converting documents, or creating annotations for the evidence. While legal professionals can gather evidence, they may not have all the resources necessary, which is why e-discovery experts should be utilized to make the process easier. Here’s how an e-discovery service can help.
Expert Help
Many firms rely on paralegals to conduct reviews on any case-related ESI. This method is expensive and could be extremely time consuming. There is also more room for error since the paralegals are probably not as knowledgeable in e-discovery as a specialty service company would be. While a firm may still have to pay an e-discovery service, there’s less of a chance of overlooking things or messing up a litigation hold. It’s important for a litigation hold to be executed properly if legal action is anticipated.
Software
E-discovery services have specialized software so collecting ESI is more time efficient and easily accessible. When legal professionals need to gather evidence for a lawsuit in a short timeframe, it’s better to go through a specialty service that has a software designed for efficiency along with people who know how the software looks and how to understand the information. Complete Discovery Source offers a Relativity suite where users can streamline evidence during legal holds, collection, processing, and review.
Attorneys Could Be Unprepared
According to research done on why e-discovery should be a top priority for an organization, those at Osterman Research, Inc. found that while most of the internal legal counsel they sampled thought knowledge of e-discovery important, less than half of them felt well prepared to manage it. If an attorney hasn’t taken the time to learn how to manage EIS, it could result in consequences for the client, the attorney themselves, or even a firm. More attorneys now are focusing more on e-discovery since its importance is relatively new to the legal system, but there are plenty of attorneys who still lack sufficient e-discovery knowledge.
FRCP Amendment Compliance
FRCP stands for Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and it was recently amended to raise standards for ESI discovery and preservation and increased the consequences of not complying with these standards. It can be extremely damaging to a case if the evidence collected isn’t stored properly or a search for evidence isn’t efficient enough. There can be added fines and fees applied if something is mishandled. It’s an attorney’s job to ensure the criteria for the amended rules are met. An e-discovery platform can help make the ESI retrieval efficient to avoid noncompliance.
The internet keeps changing, so the way data is collected and stored needs to change as well. E-discovery is changing how ESI is collected and stored so there is less room for mistakes. Professionals exist to help with lawsuits, so more legal professionals need to utilize the services available to make the best case possible for their client.
