Link to blog entry by Jeffrey Beard posted on LawTech Guru, January 2, 2008:

It’s funny how personal events tend to lead me into various thoughts and discussions about the legal market. Yesterday I flipped on my digital cable box to see that effective with the new year, Comcast has taken over Insight’s cable business in Illinois. Knowing that Comcast has had several years of turbulent press (e.g., regarding tracking customers’ web history, firing customers who used “too much” of their broadband connection, and the latest controversy over interfering with customers’ BitTorrent file transfers), I did a little Googling to reacquaint myself with the latest news and blog posts….

Link to blog entry posted by Sharon Nelson on Ride the Lightning, December 19, 2007:

Effective on December 1, 2007, the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are often referred to as “the style rules” and some lawyers have complacently chosen not to take a close look at them. This way lies a minefield however – you really do need to look at the new rules because both numbering and captioning have been changed in some places, including some of the electronic discovery provisions.  No one wants to make that mistake in a brief. A small number of the rules have been called “style-substance” amendments. Now THAT’s clear as mud. In any event, if you have the old rules, put them aside and work with the new rules, which may be found at http://cfr.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/index.html#toc.

E-mail: snelson@senseient.com  Phone: 703-359-0700

Link to blog entry by Rob Robinson posted on Information Governance Engagement Area, December 19, 2007:

Gyroscopic precession is rather simple in and of itself; it is a simple fact that when an outside force is applied to a rotating body, the result of the outside force will occur approximately 90 degrees later in the plane of rotation.

If one can apply the logic of gyroscopic precession to the effect of decisions made in the past in relation to the effects they should have at some point in the future - one could reasonable ascertain that ONSITE3 - one of the leading providers of electronic discovery services per Socha-Gelbmann’s Annual Electronic Discovery Survey (2005/2006/2007) as well as Forrester Research’s eDiscovery Vendor Landscape and Gartner’s MarketScope for E-Discovery and Litigation Support Vendors, 2007 - should be well positioned for success in 2008….

Mentions: ONSITE3 - web site | Socha Consulting listing

Rarely do I comment on the items I post on this blog, but in this case Tom Gelbmann and I felt a response was necessary.

We appreciate the attention paid to our survey results in Aaref Hilaly’s Dec. 14, 2007 blog entry, “Top E-Discovery Software Vendors” posted on e-discovery 2.0.

We disagree, however, with the conclusions.

We do not agree with the first set of conclusions:

1. That any vendor nor in the lists “is not worth considering for e-discovery”;
2. That vendors not on either list “are best avoided”; and
3. That the results show that “if you are an enterprise looking for an e-discovery solution, it is clear who you should call first.”

While we cannot speak for Gartner, we certainly speak for ourselves. In a September 26, 2007 posting to EDD Update, we sought to debunk a few misconceptions about the results of our surveys. One of those misconceptions was “I need to hire an electronic discovery provider. I want the best. All I need to do is choose someone off the Socha-Gelbmann list.” We said, “Stop right there and start over. You do not really want some abstract ‘best’; you want the best for you in a particular situation.” For the full posting, go to:

http://commonscold.typepad.com/eddupdate/2007/09/2007-socha-gelb.html

We have a similar disclaimer posted where we post our survey results at:

http://www.sochaconsulting.com/2007surveyresults.php

That disclaimer states:

As with any top-X list, it is important to keep these lists in context and use them only as appropriate. You should not choose a provider based solely on these lists, or solely on the basis of any other top-X list. The factors we examined may not apply to your circumstances, and mostly likely will not apply with the specific weightings and ratings we used. In addition, you will have needs and considerations we could not have taken into account.

It also is important to note that our evaluation model relies heavily on information provided through interviews or questionnaires (spreadsheets). We recognize that there are other vendors with the qualifications to rank within the top X, however the data on them was not available to us. Some providers, including prominent ones, did not provide any data and others, including prominent ones, provided only limited information.

By the way, the 2007 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey was our fifth annual survey, not our third.

Link to blog entry posted by Aaref Hilaly on e-discovery 2.0, December 14, 2007:

There are two independent analyst reports identifying the top e-discovery software vendors.

The first, published in June 2007, is the Socha-Gelbmann Annual Electronic Discovery Survey. The authors, George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, probably know more about e-discovery than anyone else you are likely to meet. As someone who has filled out their 178-page survey, I can tell you it is excruciating in its detail and incredibly rigorous. For example, despite the fact that (according the report) they contacted nearly 1,000 individuals and collected detailed data from 115 organizations, Tom still kept our customer references on the phone for well over an hour each….

Link to blog entry by Ralph Losey posted on e-Discovery Team, December 8, 2007:  Technical Ignorance in invalid grounds for inaccessibility under Rule 26(b)(2)(B)

Plaintiff’s counsel in a district court case in Colorado lacked the technical ability to open and read most of his client’s emails. He figured that since he could not read them, he did not have to produce them. Instead of producing the thousands of emails on a DVD containing his client’s college email, he just produced the ten he could read, and ignored the rest. Garcia v. Berkshire Life Ins. Co. of America, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86639 (D. Colo. Nov. 13, 2007)….

Link to blog entry posted by Rob Robinson on Information Governance, December 13, 2007:

In an effort to quickly yet effectively evaluate and predict both the immediate and long term success of electronic discovery vendors, the following considerations shared in a formulaic manner are provided for your review. These thoughts/considerations represent a desire to balance subjective and objective methodologies in evaluating a segment of the market (electronic discovery) that is still in the innovator/early adoption phases of market acceptance. The author is well aware that there are many considerations required to truly evaluate electronic discovery vendors, however the following considerations represent one view of how one can evaluate/compare vendors. This is the first draft of “A Simplistic Approach To Evaluating eDiscovery Vendors” and will be continually updated based on research, feedback, validation….

Link to blog entry posted by Mark Reichenbach on On the Mark, December 6, 2007:

It’s a good day here at On the Mark.

Let me explain why.

One of the many challenges a start-up company faces in its efforts to gain market traction is the nagging perception (and many times the reality) that its lack of size and resources present unique risks a customer would not likely encounter in doing business with a larger, more well-established competitor—regardless of how much better the start-up company’s technology and product offering may be.

Read the rest of this entry »

Link to blog entry by Charles Skamser posted on The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift, November 30, 2007:

I talk to 15 or 20 different Litigation Service Providers and at least 10 law firms througout the country every week regarding the Litigation Lifecycle, EDD and the technologies and services that are being used the most and having the biggest impact on day to day operations and case management. As such, I have a pretty good pulse on what the market is asking for and what the service providers and vendors are doing to fulfill these needs.

First of all, its an understatement to say that the market is growing at an accellerating rate. According to the Socha-Gelbmann Survey it is already a $2B market. However, what I have been investigating over the past couple of weeks is whehter all of this growth is with the Fortune 1000 and the big law firms in the large metropolian markets or if the need for EDD has made its way into the small and medium sized markets and thererfore the law firms and litigaton service providers that support these markets?…

Blog entry by Robert D. Owen posted on Slaw.ca, November 4, 2007:

My firm, Fulbright & Jaworski, has released the findings from our Fourth Annual Litigation Trends Survey. It’s the largest survey of its kind, and this year over 300 general counsel or heads of litigation responded to our questions. I am a principal architect of the survey and always insert a host of questions on e-discovery issues. This year’s findings are quite interesting….