[Video] If You Can Tie Your Shoes, You Can In-House eDiscovery

On March 28th, at the Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption, Logikcull COO Patrick Barry explained how corporate legal departments can leverage simple, powerful discovery software to take control of their discovery process.Ten years ago, the process of eDiscovery was one too often characterized by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Companies feared case-dispositive sanctions for minor errors, runaway collection and review costs, and never-ending litigation holds. Lawyers feared the complexity and difficulty of early eDiscovery technology and the potential disciplinary action should something go wrong. And parties of all stripes, from the pro bono plaintiff to the most frequent litigants, feared that the cost, complexity, and risk associated with discovery would keep them from their day in court.

That fear, as a result, led many lawyers to take the most conservative possible approach. The perception that a mistake with electronically stored information (ESI) could be case- and career-ending gave rise to an entire industry of eDiscovery experts and specialized vendors. Corporations, too, sought to distance themselves from eDiscovery's risks, through over preservation and outsourcing all eDiscovery work to well-heeled law firms, firms whose deep pockets could satisfy whatever penalty a judge imposed for wrongdoing—whether via a malpractice suit, disgorgement of fees, or other means.

eDiscovery, a process meant to help uncover the truth, had become “synonymous with antiquated technology, career-threatening risk, high costs, and black box processes”—and a threat to the effective administration of justice itself.

But that past is increasingly past.

While discovery challenges still exist, the risks that dominated eDiscovery a decade ago have been significantly reduced. A massive reduction in sanctions, paired with the emergence of simple, powerful, and easy-to-use eDiscovery software, and the growth of the bar’s technological abilities generally have resulted in a “de-risking” of discovery.

That de-risking is allowing parties, whether major corporate legal departments or boutique law firms, to bring more of the discovery process under their control. It has freed in-house legal teams to focus on pressing concerns beyond just litigation—whether privacy, data security, or tackling new discovery challenges, such as the emergence of new data types and sources of potential evidence.

Thanks to that de-risking and the growth of simple eDiscovery technology, today, if you can tie your own shoes, you can in-house eDiscovery.

That’s the message Logikcull COO Patric Barry brought to the Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption (SOLID) held in San Francisco last month. Today, he explained, in-house legal teams and innovative law firms can instantly deploy simple, powerful software to take strategic control over their discovery process. Watch his presentation below and, if you’d like to start tying your own shoes, get started here.

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