Out of Cold Storage and Onto Your Screen: Why In-House E-Discovery Review is Taking Hold

Bringing e-discovery review in-house is becoming more common by the week. The days of sending legal assistants and paralegals away to “storage camp” are becoming history not just because of the reality that the overwhelming amount of our business information is stored electronically. It’s because bringing review in house makes sense in terms of early case assessment as well as costs and time.

A few developments in the legal industry are fueling this trend, too. Inside counsel are becoming both savvier about technology and more impatient with the inability to gain oversight on the process when review is always and only outsourced. When counsel asks, “How far along are we in the review process?” and receives an answer like, “Um, it’s hard to quantify exactly,” it’s time to get a different system in place.

Learn New Options from a Field Expert

Betsy McCabe, a principal business consultant for Guidance Software with plenty of hands-on review experience, will present a webinar on Wednesday, April 16^th called, “Taking Control: Benefits and Best Practices for Bringing Review In-House.” 

Join her for a look at research on the expectations of increased corporate litigation, how you and your ever more technologically proficient colleagues now have a number of options for performing review, and how to establish a methodology for secure, flexible multi-party, multi-matter review. You can register here. We hope to see you there.

Comments? We welcome discussion in the Comments section below.

Data Privacy, Cross-Border E-Discovery, and the Hybrid Solution

Chris Kruse

You could call the United States the epicenter of litigation. It’s an unfortunate, but inescapable, reality that our markets and business cultures drive a preponderance of international business litigation, so much so that we’re the world leader by a mile. The challenge for European and Asian corporations lies in the fact that many have U.S. headquarters or do business with companies here, which is when e-discovery becomes complex due to their national, local, or other pertinent data-privacy laws.

There are dramatic variations in data-privacy laws and requirements across countries, domains, and jurisdictions. For example, in Germany the requirements for collecting employee e-mail and electronic documents within one company may be completely different than those for the company next door, as those requirements are determined by each corporation’s works council.

Digital DNA Strikes Again in Civil Discovery

John Blumenschein

A recent article written by attorney Mark A. Berman in Law Technology News, entitled Recent Decisions Focus on Duty to Preserve ESI and Metadata, highlights the important role that metadata can play in civil discovery. He focused on a series of recent New York State decisions that dealt with these issues, and one particular case he referenced, Alfano v. LC Main, LLC, 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1046 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Mar. 18, 2013), involved an EnCE®-certified computer examiner named Michael Nelson, who used EnCase® Forensic in his tool set to help establish that the metadata associated with a digital photograph submitted by the plaintiff had not been taken at the time of the event at issue in the matter.

This action was commenced to recover damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained by the plaintiff when he slipped and fell on ice on a construction site owned by the defendant. The plaintiffs submitted photographs of the accident scene taken several days after the accident, which they claimed depicted the area where the accident occurred and the snow and ice conditions as they existed at the time of the accident.

The Road to CEIC 2013: Labs Designed for the E-Discovery Practitioner

Jessica Bair

"The Road to CEIC 2013” is a series of blog posts on all things CEIC, before, during, and after, from an insider’s point of view.

Next week, David Neal will be teaching the EnCase® eDiscovery course to another packed classroom of eDiscovery practitioners. David is the course developer and lead instructor for EnCase eDiscovery, and for the first time at CEIC, he will present an EnCase Certified eDiscovery Practitioner (EnCEP®) review session.

May 19, 2013: First-ever EnCEP Review Session at CEIC

If you have attended David's EnCase eDiscovery course before CEIC, in person or On Demand, this is a perfect opportunity to brush up on your skills. You can take the EnCEP test for free with your CEIC registration. You must meet the training and experience requirements and register by April 26th. When I created the EnCEP program in 2009, leading a working group of e-discovery professionals to produce the first certification of its kind, I looked forward to the day that the certification review and testing would become part of the CEIC experience. May 19th is that day!

See for Yourself: EnCase® eDiscovery v5 is Out

Bryant Bell

EnCase® eDiscovery v5 marks the advent of significant new capabilities – breakthroughs, even – for in-house counsel, government agencies, and law firms who need to get e-discovery done right. No more outsourced black boxes. For the first time, litigation specialists and their legal teams can have complete oversight of the entire e-discovery process, from a greatly automated legal hold phase through early and continuous case analysis all the way through to production.

EnCase eDiscovery 4.2 Makes Electronic Discovery Easier for Enterprises

Guidance Software EnCase® eDiscovery delivers all of the speed, scalability and ease of use that organizations expect from an e-discovery solution
EnCase® eDiscovery version 4.2 software includes more than a dozen enhancements that give corporate e-discovery teams more control and automation over their enterprise deployments combined with a new user interface to make e-discovery collection and processing even easier.

The software made its debut at the Computer Enterprise Investigation Conference (CEIC) in Orlando, Florida last month.

New “check-the-box” wizard provides improved ease of use

In version 4.2, the company has a new “check-the-box” collection and processing “wizard” to help quickly specify what electronically stored information (ESI) should be collected and/or processed. These capabilities help e-discovery teams to set up repeatable processes that are the linchpin to defensible e-discovery efforts.

New easy-to-use collection and processing interface

Improved automation and workflow
New automation features include load balancing, and the ability to build workflows, which enables better prioritization and fast processing across global enterprise infrastructures. The new features are added to a platform that is well known in the industry as the gold-standard for collection and processing strength, and an architecture that offers unlimited scalability and usage, which means enterprises can take on large cases without having to upgrade the product or purchase additional licenses.

Support for Microsoft Office 365
Adding to its long time Microsoft Office Exchange and SharePoint collection capabilities, EnCase® eDiscovery now supports Microsoft Office 365. Support enables the collection of electronically stored information (ESI) from Microsoft Office Exchange and SharePoint in the cloud. This new feature is important for those organizations that are transitioning to the cloud.

Guidance Software was also recently named a Leader in the first Gartner Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery which assesses 24 vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision in the e-discovery market. To download the full report click here: Gartner Magic Quadrant for E-Discovery.

“Enterprise e-discovery solutions increasingly must handle multiple digital investigation scenarios – not just legal cases – as well as supporting organizational goals without disrupting business, delivering collection and preservation strength that stands up in court, and providing scalable data capacity,” said Katey Wood, analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.

EnCase® eDiscovery is a comprehensive enterprise e-discovery solution that includes legal hold, pre-collection analytics, collection, preservation, processing, analysis and first pass review. It is based on the company’s judicially accepted forensic technology.

Take control of e-discovery with a single, unified solution
EnCase® eDiscovery enables customers to take control of their e-discovery in a single unified solution that manages everything from legal hold through first-pass review, preserves metadata, only collects relevant files, and is scalable across large global networks with unique pre-collection analytics as well as analysis and first-pass review at any point in the process – all backed by expert services from Guidance Software that provide industry standard best practices, training, and certifications (EnCE® and EnCEP®).

EnCase® eDiscovery version 4.2 is available now.

Russ Gould is director of product marketing at Guidance Software.

EnCase®, EnCE®, EnCEP®, EnScript®, FastBloc®, Guidance Software™ and Tableau™ are registered trademarks or trademarks owned by Guidance Software in the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be used without prior written permission. All other marks and brands may be claimed as the property of their respective owners.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. There can be no assurance that demand for the Guidance Software's products will continue at current or greater levels, or that the Company will continue to grow revenues, or be profitable. There are also risks that the Guidance Software's pursuit of providing network security and eDiscovery technology might not be successful, or that if successful, it will not materially enhance the Guidance Software's financial performance; that the Company could fail to retain key employees; that changes in customer requirements and other general economic and political uncertainties could impact the Guidance Software's relationship with its customers; and that delays in product development, competitive pressures or technical difficulties could impact timely delivery of next-generation products; and other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in Guidance Software's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company specifically disclaims any responsibility for updating these forward-looking statements.