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Showing 21-40 of 787 Blog Posts
Got Office 365 Compliance Search/Export Issues?
07 - 07 - 2017
Greg Buckles
Sorry for slacking off on blogs while I have been wrestling with tricky matters and systems. I am stealing a moment to carefully report some potential search and export issues with the new Office 365 Security & Compliance Center. Normally I would not write about any potential eDiscovery system issue until I fully understood the behavior and gave the provider time to debug the problem. Because the vast majority of my clients and readers are already experimenting with the new Compliance Center for holds, searches and collections, I felt compelled to at least raise a yellow warning flag of caution. Reasonable quality control steps in your eDiscovery workflow may catch the export issues we encountered, but they would not catch the inconsistent search results in our scenario without validation level confirmation tests. Before I detail the anonymized scenarios, it is important to reaffirm that circumstances have prevented us from more than minimal testing or even opening a Microsoft support ticket yet, though that is in progress. I was not able to reproduce this behavior in my own test O365 environment. All of this means that the issues may be related to corrupt data or other unique client variable – i.e. not relevant to your environment. Scenarios and behavior:
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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Office 365 Collection
Is LexisNexis Phasing Out Concordance Desktop?
05 - 30 - 2017
Greg Buckles
My recent research on the impact of merger and acquisitions in the eDiscovery market hit a nerve with many of you. One of the more interesting rumors that surfaced was that LexisNexis was “not taking new Concordance contracts” and not offering any alternatives. Two years ago I blogged on how successful technology like LAW seemed to languish after being acquired by global technology companies such as LexisNexis. I followed up that rumor by putting in an online purchase request. In past RFPs, I have gotten a call from a sales rep within a day at the most. This time no response. I asked around at the Ingenious Retreat last week and found at least one peer who had heard the same rumor from a friend working at LexisNexis. None of this is credible or confirmed news, but it reinforces the need to monitor your technology and service providers. Active tech companies should be releasing new versions or features on a regular basis to stay competitive. No matter how many copies of the old Summation iBlaze are still running in firms, it is no longer a supported product. Keeping client data or work content on it is like an airline running critical flight operations on a Windows 98 server vulnerable to WannaCry. I have no doubt that the LexisNexis team have some kinds of plan for Concordance desktop customers. The whole company seems to be phasing out software in favor of cloud services, so I am recommending that my clients keep that in mind when deciding if they are going to renew Concordance support or look at migration costs.
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Review Platform
Lighthouse Acquires Discovia – Merging Corporate & Firm Customer Bases
05 - 18 - 2017
Greg Buckles
I have always thought of Lighthouse eDiscovery as a stealth player in the eDiscovery market. In fact, I believe this is their first public merger/acquisition since Spire’s $30 million investment back in 2015. We never really covered them as market analysts in that 2008-2015 time period. Maybe their focus on developing corporate dedicated service relationship over chasing the big cases kept them under the radar. Now that they have won a couple of recent RFP’s for my own corporate clients, I have a much better appreciation for their capabilities and GTO strategy. Discovia seems to have a more traditional focus on matters and law firms. They are both Relativity shops, though Discovia seems to have partnered with some kCura alternatives such as IPRO and Brainspace. So how could this impact their existing customers?
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EDD Services
DTI-LDiscovery Suit Hits the News – Finally
05 - 17 - 2017
Greg Buckles
In my last opinion piece, I wondered if the eDiscovery news/marketing outlets would ever cover the fight between our largest global service borgs, DTI/Epiq and Kroll/Ldiscovery. I was happy to see the relatively unfiltered Above the Law article by Kelly Twigger yesterday. Ms. Twigger did not whitewash or bury any of the rather lurid accusations. Indeed, she highlighted the irony of top eDiscovery professionals using DTI issued devices to allegedly negotiate their quartet’s $24 million bounty for taking DTI trade secrets and customers to LDiscovery. Bravo. I wonder if this will cost them any DTI or KrolLDiscovery marketing dollars?
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EDD Services
Why Is Your Media Not Reporting the DTI-LDiscovery Suit?
05 - 03 - 2017
Greg Buckles
My thanks for the comments and reposts of yesterday’s blog covering the ongoing lawsuit between two of our industries largest global service providers. Read my blog (or better yet, go get the complaint from PACER) to get the allegations and the potential impact to provider non-compete clauses, security practices and even customers who may get caught up in the fight. A reader asked why they had not seen the case reported in any of their news feeds or media subscriptions. I would have missed this case if a peer had not sent me the cite. All of this begs the question, “Why are the media companies with names that include ‘News’ not covering this multi-million dollar dispute?”
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EDD Services
Fighting Over Customers: DTI vs. LDiscovery Lawsuit
05 - 02 - 2017
Greg Buckles
My thanks to a peer for shooting me this scoop. I dusted off my PACER password and found the attached complaint and final order transferring this fascinating story from Virginia to NY. Forgive my syntax, but the cite is Document Technologies, Inc. et al. v. LDiscovery LLC d/b/a KrolLDiscovery, Civil Action No. 1:17-cv-405-AJT/IDD E. D. Va. Complaints are only one side of any story, but DTI’s side of this story claims that LDiscovery solicited four top Epiq reps to download proprietary data and entice former customers to LDiscovery after their one year non-compete expired. All the M&A activity in the eDiscovery market (check my ITLA webinar) results in lots of personnel turnover and unfortunately gives rise to the temptation to take advantage of that uncertainty to poach top employees and their long term accounts. I am sure that I will do a more in depth dive into this case as it gathers steam, but I wanted to get you some of the fun claims from the DTI complaint:
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EDD Services
Will Legal Hold Own the eDiscovery Platform Market?
05 - 02 - 2017
Greg Buckles
Adapting a legal hold platform for a corporate client got me thinking about how Barry Murphy and the eDJ analyst team struggled with the definition of an ‘eDiscovery Platform’ for our eDJ Matrix. Eventually we made a Solomonian judgment and created two platform categories covering key upstream (Corporate) and downstream (Law Firm) functions. Arguably, the consolidation of eDiscovery point products from sequential silos to integrated platforms started when Summation iBlaze added processing and early timeline/matter management features. As much as we wanted those multidirectional arrows on the EDRM diagram to actually reflect an integrated lifecycle and technology, eDiscovery still is a reactive, single use fire drill for far too large a portion of the market. But this is slowly changing. Microsoft and enterprise archives now support real preservation in place with accurate (though limited) retrieval search. Since the 2008 recession, smart serial corporate litigants have fought to take control of their eDiscovery spend and manage their own matters, holds, collections and everything else up to the actual review. The long term eDiscovery nirvana is preservation through production in place from a single interface. We are not there yet. But we know that Microsoft is head there and will deliver basic functionality at a relatively low subscription rate. So why do I think that Legal Hold Notification may be the key to eventually owning the eDiscovery lifecycle?
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Corporate Matter Management
Legal Hold Notification
Craig Ball: Lack of Mobile Device Preservation = Malpractice
04 - 19 - 2017
Greg Buckles
I love it when other eDiscovery bloggers step up to point out industry ostriches. Yep, folks burying their heads in the sand rather than just tackle a tough problem. I read, “A New Paradigm in Mobile Device Preservation” by Craig Ball with glee. I am not an attorney and carefully stay away from anything that could be legal advice. It takes an attorney with balls like Ball to publicly opine that NOT instructing your clients to preserve mobile device content is malpractice. As you read his argument, remember that Craig Ball has been special master or testifying expert (mostly plaintiff) in some very complicated eDiscovery matters. As many of my clients will point out, most of their legal holds fall into well known categories without any issues that they think would involve text messages, browser histories or other unique mobile device content. The conversation goes something like this:
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Mobile Device Discovery
ILTA Webinar In The Can – Managing Providers In a Shrinking eDiscovery Market
04 - 17 - 2017
Greg Buckles
As many of you know, I have been off the speaker circuit for a while. I expected to be a bit rusty and asked my good friend Duane Lites (Dir. Lit Support for Jackson Walker LLP) to co-host and help prevent the Charlie Brown teacher voice syndrome. I was pleasantly surprised at the registration, attendance and retention numbers (always hard to keep busy peers on for a full hour). Best of all, I had fun doing the research interviews and the webinar. Great questions from the audience and I felt like we managed to deliver practical tips for mitigating the impact of a provider being bought. The full webinar recording is now on the ILTA website here: http://www.iltanet.org/viewdocument/managing-providers-in-a-shrinking-e I posted the deck and raw survey results on the eDJ Group site: http://www.edjgroupinc.com/research ILTA is looking for some members to interview for a follow up article. So if your corporate policies allow you to be publicly interviewed, shoot me a note and I will connect you with the right resource. My next public event should be at the May retreat organized by Ing3nious. I will post topics and other information when available.
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EDD Services
DTI Invests in Valora Autoclassification
03 - 30 - 2017
Greg Buckles
It seems that I was not the only one interested in how Valora’s PowerHouse could address the sprawling corporate digital landfills. DTI has made a minority investment in Valora to provide the functionality to their Information Governance clients. In the M&A world, a minority investment from what is essentially a giant channel partner is ‘neither fish nor fowl’to use a 17th Century idiom for something that is not easily categorized. We understand acquisitions, but Valora remains an independent organization from DTI and maintains its woman-owned status. The real question is how this will affect the nascent partner channel that Valora had just started to cultivate. Will DTI competitors be willing to use PowerHouse when they imagine that DTI can undercut them on the license fees? Will Valora essentially become a captive technology that is resold exclusively as a DTI service? This is essentially what happened to Patterns when FTI acquired Attenex. I don’t think that DTI’s investment comes at the price of Valora’s independent status, but I do think that the Valora team will have to work a bit harder to reassure potential channel partners or non-DTI customers of that fact. This investment confirms my new webinar slide (below) that shows DTI having the largest number of acquisitions/investments in the eDiscovery market. Early M&A Impact poll and interview results are starting to paint a picture of the concerns facing consumers when their provider is acquired or takes a large investment that changes their Go To Market strategy. So take my poll to see the results and join the ILTA webinar by Duane Lites and myself on April 12th to hear our take on how the eDiscovery market is consolidating and how you can mitigate the risks.
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Analytic Engine
Analytics
EDD Services
What If My Hosted Case Is Held For Ransom?
03 - 22 - 2017
Greg Buckles
While conducting interviews for my upcoming ILTA webinar on coping with eDiscovery provider acquisitions, a sharp litigation support manager posed a hypothetical scenario based on the ransom hack of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. We were discussing contingency plans, liability and concern over loss of data when a provider went out of business or was acquired. Very few of my initial interview respondents were seriously concerned with data loss for a normal M&A event. But at least one raised the concern about all that email data being uploaded into Relativity. How many attachment zips and links could hold the same kind of ransomware that encrypted Hollywood Presbyterian? Most of the hosting/SaaS contracts that I have recently reviewed for RFP engagements have clauses that make the client responsible for the content of all uploads and specifically call out malicious code. Does that take the provider off the hook? Would the bench grant a production date extension or relief if 2 months of review work product was made unavailable due to criminal hacking? Who is liable to remediate any lost work or data? Who should pay the ransom if it is low enough?
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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Got a Favorite OCR/Paper Solution? Tell Me About It
03 - 15 - 2017
Greg Buckles
It has been a long time since I last compared OCR platforms like ABBYY Solutions, Adobe and other proprietary/OEM solutions. As much as I would love to say that paper is dead, boxes of old, weathered paper seem to pop up in many regulatory requests or matters. For many years, we automatically discounted OCR quality for older paper collections. We sent all scanned paper straight for manual objective coding prior to actual attorney review. That adds up fast and the $/doc are hard to justify when only producing a small percentage of that paper. So where does paper belong in this modern world of predictive coding/TAR? If we could trust the OCR engines to report handwriting, recognition levels and other exceptions, then we might be able to at least use modern text analytics and search on a portion of paper docs. The best solution will probably be a hybrid workflow that uses technology to sort and group prior to some kind of manual pass over portions of the collection. Have you or your provider built such a solution? Then I want to hear about it.
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Processing-ECA
eDJ Brief: Valora Tech
03 - 01 - 2017
Greg Buckles
It always fascinates me to see service companies dare to transform themselves into technology sales. So many of the earliest eDiscovery companies started in firms or scan shops who hired developers to meet client’s requirements when there was no acceptable Off-The-Shelf (OTS) software available. I was one of those corporate clients writing functional product requirement documents for my providers when regulators made the first demands for native email productions. Doing a briefing with Sandra Serkes about the evolution of Valora Tech was a trip down memory lane. Valora was founded as a typical service provider with an emphasis on records management. They developed custom automated document data mining, categorization and analytics software to meet client demands. The trick for any small custom development shop is to rise above the individual client requirements to create a solution platform that meets the pain points of the broader market. In Valora’s case, they went from automatic BIB coding to create their PowerHouse data mining platform to process and categorize live enterprise data. This is a lofty goal and I am the last person to hype something that I have not seen function in a client’s environment. Too many technology giants have overpromised and underdelivered on enterprise automated categorization over the last decade. So take my briefing notes with my usual ‘trust but verify’ advice.
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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Analytic Engine
Analytics
Processing-ECA
Your Provider Just Got Bought, Now What?
03 - 01 - 2017
Greg Buckles
With eDiscovery providers large and small being gobbled up in the consolidation rush, the odds are good that one of your preferred providers will be rollup up into KrolLDiscovery, DTI or Consilio at some point. This trend has VC’s and investment banks trying to figure out how to minimize the multiples paid while maximizing the ‘synergy’ between companies. So what does that mean when your favorite sales rep is lost to the inevitable post acquisition RIF and the header has changed on your latest invoice? The reality is that no one can predict the fallout from a merger or acquisition (M&A) in mid review or post production defense of process. I have guided clients through migrations, renegotiated terms and performed ‘Humpty Dumpty’ exercises to reconstruct years of eDiscovery history after the primary players have moved on to greener pastures. Most of the time, it has been business as usual from the client perspective while provider employees scramble to figure out new protocols and technology from the parent company. All of this M&A activity makes a good research topic and hopefully a better webinar for ILTA on April 12th at 11am CST (link to be posted asap). So take my 1 minute survey and shoot me an email if you have provider M&A war stories to share. As always, if you want to see a good list of recent M&A activity, check out Rob Robinson’s Complex Discovery page.
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Markets
LTNY 2017 Photo Commentary
02 - 22 - 2017
Greg Buckles
This year I started snapping pics from the exhibit floor in reaction to the overwhelming use of kCura orange in booths (yes, I know that DiscoverReady had it first). Once started, it is hard to stop. So here are some of my show pictures with commentary. Orange is the new Black! kCura’s vivid shade dominated the exhibit floor booths except where contrasted with blue. I guess that the marketing palette is down to two shades now, ENERGY ORANGE and TRUSTED BLUE. [pics in full post]
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Markets
And Then There Was One – eDJ’s Mikki Tomlinson Takes Role With Exterro
02 - 13 - 2017
Greg Buckles
For those of you who have followed eDJ Group over the last 9 years, you will understand how bitter sweet this announcement is. My last business partner and analyst-consultant has accepted a role with Exterro. I know that Mikki’s friends and fans will join me in wishing her the best of luck at Exterro, a better fit for her expertise in matter management and legal holds. Being an independent consultant in the eDiscovery market demands constant research and outreach. I have watched too many of my peers hang out their shingle as solo practitioners, only to fold shop when cases unexpectedly settle, home builds go south or corporate client’s abandon projects. I and my clients will miss Mikki even as we wish her the best in her new role.
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Traveling with Client ESI? TSA Ramps Up Device Seizures
02 - 13 - 2017
Greg Buckles
Keeping this non-political, the fight over Trump’s travel ban has kicked over a privacy rock, customs demanding social media credentials for inbound travelers. If you work in eDiscovery, you probably have confidential client information on your phone and laptop. You have an obligation to protect that ESI. Time to update or create an overseas travel policy to identify and protect critical or sensitive communications, especially if you are traveling to or from Muslim countries. This Wired article has some basic guidelines or approaches, but bottom line is to move key communications to the cloud prior to border crossings. I still think that the risk of exposure for any business traveler who does not fit CBP’s racial/religious profile is minimal. But you can only assess risk and potential consequences if you are aware of Custom’s rights to seize/access your devices and educate your employees. Remember that most employees take their devices on vacation. http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban
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Policy Management
Check Out – Thoughts About LTNY 2017
02 - 09 - 2017
Greg Buckles
My friend Doug Austin at CloudNine solicited quotes from industry pundits (yours truly included) that generated some fun perspectives on the show. So do a fast read here. http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/thoughts-about-legaltech-new-york-2017-50268/
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Markets
Microsoft Freezes New Searches on eDiscovery Center
02 - 08 - 2017
Greg Buckles
If you were an early adopter of the on-premise or O365 eDiscovery Center SharePoint site, it is time to migrate to the newer Security and Compliance Center. This article gives the history of in-place legal hold searches and Microsoft’s reasoning for pushing customers to the new platform. Given how many of my clients are still struggling with upgrades to Exchange 2013 (much less 2016), Microsoft has to play the tough parent to reduce global support overhead. For eDiscovery Center users, you need a plan to age off inactive matters/holds, migrate active matters in motion and start all new matters in the Compliance Center. Time to put in the late hours or get a manage service partner to do the grunt work.
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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Enterprise Hold Platform
LTNY 2017 Wrap Up Notes
02 - 07 - 2017
Greg Buckles
Note to self. Politely decline future destination wedding invitations on either side of Legal Tech. That should explain the delay in getting out my remaining briefing/meeting notes. I usually clear the week after LTNY to decompress, digest all the information and follow up on the stack of biz cards from folks who I ran into at the show. This year I am juggling three hot engagements, while fighting for writing time. The briefings and social events on days Two and Three gave me a lot to think about, more than I want to publish without some retrospection. Below are my ‘filtered’ briefing notes for an early taste.
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SaaS-Cloud Offerings
Mobile Device Discovery
Markets
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