Early Case Assessment News & Articles

Since I began covering e-Discovery in 2008, a lot has happened. Companies have been hard-pressed to come up with a cost-effective, yet manageable way to collect, gain access to and review relevant information created within its four walls and in the cloud. Companies experimented with outside counsel and in-house e-Discovery platforms. Vendors promised exciting new technologies from enterprise search to workflow management to predictive coding, aimed at decreasing cost, effort and risk, while increasing reliability, accuracy and defensibility. And yet, we still don’t always know what’s working well within the enterprise. Thanks to a new report by FTI, we have an inside look at how companies are using e-Discovery, their best practices and their expectations for the future.

Need an e-Discovery solution that reflects perspectives of both the IT and legal departments? The search may be over. Today, Exterro released a new data management layer for its integrated solution suite. Fusion Zeta is an automated, easy-to-administer application designed to handle in-place early case assessment, preservation, collection and analysis. But perhaps most importantly, it gives legal teams 360-degree access into the entire e-discovery process, while eliminating the chaos of manual processes.

When it comes to e-Discovery, there are so many parts of the process that companies seek to improve through third party solutions. Today RenewData (news, site) has announced the availability of its Anagram Keyword Development, a solution aimed at improving the thought process.

At the beginning of February Clearwell Systems (news, site) announced that it was in the process of upgrading its e-Discovery platform. That upgrade is now complete and recently v5.5 was released with a number of pre-built templates designed to make e-Discovery relatively easy.

Lateral Data (news, site) has been processing other people’s data for years. They’ve used their own platform from which to monitor and review data and now they’re opening it up to everyone else. Originally launched in January, Viewpoint isn’t exactly new, but it is shiny.

In a recent survey on top providers of Early Case Assessment (ECA) services, Digital Reef (news, site) did not fair all that well. But now, with the release of a new ECA Application, their position on the list of favorites may just change.

Is your data wild? Unruly, even? For data in the wild, StoredIQ (news, site) lets you Analyze Anywhere. That’s the name of their new early case assessment solution (ECA) that enables users to perform early case analysis on data, well anywhere.

CMSWire spoke with Ellis Ishaya, Vice President of Operations about Analyze Anywhere and how it can change how we think about and conduct ECA.

More releases from Autonomy (news, site)  this time an appliance that will facilitate eDiscovery with early case assessment and legal hold and a new solution specifically for the law profession that will automatically tell users when there is a conflict of interest in cases.

Early case assessment is an important part of the eDiscovery process and Equivio (news, site) demonstrates that with some updates to their product Relevance.

Sometimes companies need a little insight when handling legal holds. Thank goodness that Recommind (news, site) has your back. They have announced the availability of Insite Legal Hold version 2.0.

The folks at Clearwell think that a storm is brewing in eDiscovery. A storm so perfect that it brings together increased data volumes, litigation, compliance standards and a growing need to cut costs, forcing companies to face their eDiscovery needs head on.

Like storm chasers who investigate the forces of nature, Clearwell wanted to learn more about the status of the eDiscovery. Enlisting help from the Enterprise Survey Group (ESG), Clearwell surveyed over 100 Fortune 2000 enterprises and government agencies and focused questions around the giant whirlwind of activities affecting eDiscovery in the enterprise.

Congratulations are in order. Clearwell Systems (news, site) has been awarded US Patent No. 7,593,995.

For those of us who are not patent examiners, US Patent No. 7,593,995 refers to “methods and systems of electronic message threading and ranking.”

As the season approaches turkey and mistletoe, predictions for the new year are inevitable. Last year we outlined ten trends for eDiscovery in 2009 as described by Clearwell Systems. Their outlook mostly proved true as corporations did indeed take matters into the own hands and implement in-house ediscovery platforms, and the global economic downturn drove global eDiscovery initiatives.

And though we might not have seen as many companies figure out how to manage the new media of business communication, it has definitely been on their minds.

So this year, we turn once again to Clearwell to outline the eDiscovery trends of 2010. The fact that there are only five may indicate the growth and awareness of eDiscovery in the enterprise. As well, they touch on the functionality and technology of eDiscovery more than anything.

So without further adieu, CMSWire presents Clearwell's Top Five eDiscovery Trends of 2010.

Ever dream of moving electronically stored information from one system to another seamlessly and while saving money? Today is your lucky day. CaseCentral and StoredIQ have formed an alliance in an effort to do just that.

Together, they will provide an integrated eDiscovery offering that ranges from identification, preservation, collection and processing of electronically stored information (ESI) through analysis, review, production and post-production re-use.

According to a recent survey conducted by The Cowen Group, a search firm specializing in staffing litigation and practice Support and eDiscovery professionals, Early Case Assessment (ECA), while being implemented by roughly 75 percent of the participants surveyed, is still only being used by those in the legal sector. Non-legal corporations accounted for only 37 percent of ECA use.