10 August  2011 — One of the more contentious issues in e-discovery is the value of e-discovery certification.  Rebecca James, Esq. (Program Manager at Fios, Inc.) has been running a series on that topic.   As she points out while “there was skepticism and a lack of consensus on the importance of credentialing … minds were generally open to this growing trend.”  The series covers all views, pro and con, and includes all the leading experts and pundits in the e-discovery world. 

Part 1 queried lawyers on the topic (click here) 

Part 2 queried litigation support leaders (click here)    

Part 3 is the feedback from the leaders of the credentialing organizations and a look inside the e-discovery certification programs (click here).

And for a good source of e-discovery material access the Fios Knowledge Center (click here).

Not to be outdone by Clearwell Systems, Fios, Craig Ball, Recommind and everybody else making e-discovery predictions/trends-to-watch in 2011, The Posse List presents its 10.5 e-discovery (and other) predictions for 2011. 

1.  E-discovery vendors abandon the idea of end to end e-discovery and return to concept of “one trick pony” (“We can scan that for you but for that OCR stuff ya gotta go to our strategic gold and platinum premium channel partner buddy”)

2.  In a cut-throat competition war that takes cloud computing to a new threshold, a new computing paradigm, a new dimension, a new [insert your own clichéd and overused phrase here] is born when Microsoft-Google-Autonomy began to buy up all cumulus clouds they can find.  DOJ and DGCOMP launch inquiries. Climate change advocates riot in the streets …. just to riot in the streets having forgotten what the crowd sourcing text message actually said. 

3.  LegalTech drops title of  largest “legal technology” event and renames itself “EDiscoveryTech” after Law.com survey reveals that of the 422 vendors present, 419 do e-discovery, and the other 3 are Hyundai HotWheels, Speedway Racers and Convert-A-Van who thought they were at the Javits Auto Show. 

4.  Not to be outdone by Recommind’s “Predictive Coding” and FTI Consulting’s “Suggestive Coding”, vendors clamor to provide “Inferred Coding” and “Looks-Related” coding.  

5.  Before the events are broadcast, Wikileaks announces winners of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Oscars, Emmys and Tonys.  Julian Assange assassinated by shadowy group called MADMEN (“That Iraq/Afghan stuff just cost lives.  We’re talking money here!!”)

6.  Moving beyond early case assessment and early information assessment, Guidance Software launches “Precog Assessment” which tells you who will sue you and why before they are even born.  Browning Marean’s great-great grandchild writes e-book on the implications for legal holds.  

7.  Sensing a (monetization) opportunity, Facebook launches “They Said It, We Got It” which allows legal enforcement officers, attorneys, ex-spouses, potential employers, etc. to buy anything ever said by anybody on Facebook.  Facebook amends its privacy policy to read “None”.   

8.  January 2011 Steve Jobs announces launch of iPad2.  Hits stores in April 2011 and sells 12 million units by July.  In September Steve Jobs announces iPad 3, in stores by Xmas. 

9.  Due to an unfortunate typo at the first annual “Cloud Computing and eDiscovery Conference” in Punta del Fuego, clod computing becomes the next “new new thing” as vendors scramble to figure out why they didn’t think of it.   Microsoft-Google-Autonomy began to buy up all vacant land in Argentina for servers.  DOJ and DGCOMP launch inquiries.  Climate change advocates riot in the streets …. yadda yadda yadda. 

10.  In an expected development, all document review software now includes a drop-down choice for contract attorney reviewers titled “Irrelevant-Data  Dump” to accelerate the production of data to opposing counsel.  Pundits suspect it is attempt to take the piss out of those judges’ panels which seem to appear at every e-discovery conference.

10.5   After years of meetings, the Sedona Conference Working Group on information, discovery and disclosure issues definitions of “e-discovery” and “e-disclosure” over American objections (“I still think those EU folks are a bunch of wankers; just download the damn stuff and give it to me!!”) but debate continues on whether you still need the hyphen between the “e” and the “d”.

Happy Holidays from The Posse List.

Our team arrived in NYC yesterday for LegalTech New York.  It opens today (February 1st) for 3 days.  It will be held at The Hilton New York (1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York  1-212-586-7000).

The show is presented by ALM Events, a producer of educational and networking events.  And most of us know ALM through its various media outlets/brands:  The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, Law.com, Law Journal Press, The National Law Journal, etc. 

It is the world’s largest legal technology conference and trade show.  Last year the show attracted nearly 13,000 attendees and featured almost 300 exhibiting companies. The 2010 conference will offer more than 60 educational sessions for attendees on topics ranging from electronic discovery and knowledge management to emerging technologies.  

Each day, the sessions are parsed into multiple tracks including: Risk Management, General Counsel, Web 3.0, Intelligence, Knowledge Management, International E-Discovery, ILTA Advanced IT, Comprehensive Recordkeeping, and Emerging Technology.

We’ll be posting some more interviews as part of our series on e-discovery (click here) with folks from Fios, FTI Technology, Recommind, and LDM Global.  We’ll also have a video chat with Jason R Baron and Ralph Losey,  plus Chris Dale.  And we’ll have chats with George Socha and Anne Kershaw and Patrick Oot.  Plus many others.

But there is always much too much to cover in such major events like this, even for a 4-person team.   Yes,we’ll try to cover all the vendors, and all the technology, but we intend to focus our substantive pieces/posts/reporting on:

1.  Developments in predictive coding and  computer assisted document categorization.

2.  Europe and Asia and cross-border e-discovery.

3.  The convergence of intelligence, intuition and information (the subject of Malcolm Gladwll’s keynote presentation on February 3rd.  See below.)

We have covered both LegalTech shows (New York and LA) because our membership base has expanded beyond our core of contract attorneys/temporary attorneys and contract forensics consultants to include paralegals, in-house counsel, law firm attorneys, solo practitioners, e-discovery vendors, legal media, and others. 

If you are contract attorney/temporary attorney or a contract forensics consultant or paralegal, or involved in some aspect of e-discovery work, and you are in NYC next week,  you should go.  No, not necessarily pay the $695 single-day attendance fee if you cannot afford it.  Because a lot of LegalTech events are open to everybody.  

For instance, you can get a pass to attend the Exhibits, the Keynote addresses, the General Sessions, and the Emerging Technologies Tracks & SuperSessions all for free.  Just go to the registration page  (click here)  and you’ll see the box (ok, it’s a circle) to attend those things for $0.0.  

Wny go to the exhibit hall and see vendors?  

1. To learn more about e-discovery technology and the e-discovery industry.
2. For contract attorneys, to meet with vendors who are on the “right-side” (document review and production) of the EDRM like Applied Discovery, CaseCentral, Clearwell Systems, Fios, Trilantic, and many others.  They either have an internal document review/production component or are aligned with partners that do.  As we have said in multiple posts, many vendors now handle all elements of the EDRM (gee,how many times at LegalTech are we going to hear “end-to-end solutions”?)  So check it all out.  All the major players will be in one spot. 
3. If you are a forensics person or otherwise involved in e-discovery work, #2 applies to you, too, since you’ll find a vendors involved in all or part of every aspect of the EDRM.

Take your resume or business card.  Talk to people.  Make a connection.  The appropriate hiring person may not be there (the vendors are trying to sell stuff.  duh.) but ask for an appropriate contact, a person’s name/email.  Collect business cards.  Make something happen.  In the last two years we have met scores of Posse List members at LegalTech and other legal technology conference and trade shows and they were doing just that.  In the past year we have heard from over 300 of our contract attorney/contract paralegal Posse List members tell us they found jobs with vendors — and not just document review.  In data collection and processing, , forensics, product development, project management, etc. 

And some vendors are running special programs, also free.  For instance, CT Summation is running sessions off the Exhibit Hall on Feb 2nd from 9-12.   The Exhibit Hall hours are:

       Monday, February 1st                 10am to 5pm

       Tuesday, February 2nd               10am to 5pm

       Wednesday, February 3rd          10am to 3pm

Want a complete list of the vendors appearing?  Then click here.  You will get a list and a web link to each vendor’s website.   When you get to the Exhibit Hall you will receive a brochure that indicates the booth number of each vendor.

And the vendors will part with a brochure or two so you learn about their products, learn more about e-discovery.  They want to educate.  In our interview series (click here) you will note each vendor tries to educate on various e-discovery issues as well as honk their own horn. 

The series was developed as part of our efforts to provide a voice in the discussion around e-discovery, bringing together interviews, news summaries, and resources.  We do that in addition to providing job and project postings (click here to subscribe to our job lists).

And as we noted, some of the major LegalTech sessions are open to all.  For example: 

Feb 2nd at 9:00am:         Facebook:  Perspectives of Corporate eDiscovery and Social Media presented by:  Mark Howitson, Deputy General Counsel, Facebook

Feb 2^nd at 9:00am:          Epiq Systems SuperSessions on Controlling Discovery Expenses in 2010 (and CLE eligible)

Feb 3rd at 9:00am:           I3:  The Convergence of Intelligence, Intuition and Information presented by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers, Blink ,and The Tipping Point), Dr. Lisa Sanders (New York Times Columnist, Author of Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis), and David Craig (Chief Strategy Officer, Thomson Reuters)

Feb 3^rd starting at 10:30am:    Trilantic’s International SuperSession  regarding international disclosure matters.

There is tons more.  For the full event brochure click here.

And if you can’t make it, we’ll have full coverage through our Twitter posts on our home page, and you can also see them at www.twitter.com/posselist.  We are alo running  a live video stream of certain events on our home page courtsey of Applied Discovery.  And if you have any difficult accessing it you can also go here  you can also access it here: http://www.livestream.com/applieddiscovery .

Hope to see you at LegalTeh.

In the latter part of the last decade — ok, the fall of 2009 — we completed what we call the trifecta:  full coverage of three of the premier electronically stored information (ESI) and e-discovery events for the litigation industry:  The Masters Conference (click here), the ACC Annual Meeting (click here), and the Georgetown Law Advanced E-Discovery Institute (click here).

As expressed at all of these events we are in “the perfect storm”: ever increasing data volumes; more litigation and government inquiries, and skyrocketing e-discovery costs. 

And if we learned only one thing about the explosion of ESI and corporate data it was this: Craig Ball, Jason R. Baron and Ralph Losey can scare the bejesus out of you.  These guys think in terms of exabytes … and beyond.  Although Jason and Ralph try to make it more palatable by doing it to the tune of Darude’s Sandstorm (click here).   And Craig Ball did assuage our concerns (a bit) by telling us that while we live in an infinite universe it is all manageable.

At all of these ESI events it was stressed — stress being the operative word — that in-house legal departments have been forced to cut their budgets just like their “sisters”, the law firms but with a greatly increased workload.  And the end of 2009 and the beginning of this year saw survey after survey tell us/show us that ESI and e-discovery requests would simply skyrocket.  As one of many examples, see the Enterprise Strategy Group study (click here).

So companies are looking to innovate their way out of the recession, strategically cutting costs, bringing services and processes in-house to gain more control, and doing more than just “quickly brandishing an umbrella looking for a place to seek shelter” quoting the  Enterprise Strategy study.

But as one memorable GC told us at the ACC Annual Meeting in Boston last year “the reality is we need to get control of our ESI — our data data data which seems to be everywhere!! — at the very beginning of our process.  Not just at litigation time”. 

A nightmare.  Or two … or three …. for general counsels everywhere.

And while it is impossible for a general counsel to isolate the effects of software from all the other efforts presumably made to rein in outside counsel and other spends, corporate law departments can control spending via technology.  And there are vendors and technology galore as ESI management, e-discovery, governance, compliance and risk are all melding into one pot.  And those great folks at Gartner have provided us with a nice summary of the e-discovery vendor landscape as we begin 2010 (click here).

So as LegalTech New York comes quickly upon us (click here) we are launching a new series whereby we will post detailed interviews we conducted over the last several months with the thought leaders in ESI management and e-discovery, with links to articles, blog posts and websites, focusing on ESI management and e-discovery for the corporate law department, and the law firm. The series will run up to and through LegalTech, and beyond. We have some 30+ interviews in the queue which will include:  Dean Larry Center, Bob Eisenberg and Nicole Steckman of Georgetown Law CLE; Tess Blair of Morgan Lewis; Jim Moore of Merrill Corporation; Ron Friedmann of Integreon; Deborah Baron of Autonomy; Tim Williams of Index Engines; Steve d’Alencon of CaseCentral; Nigel Murray of Trilantic; Virginia Henschel and Rob Robinson of Applied Discovery; Mary Mack of Fios; Adam Cohen of FTI Technology; Chris Dale of the eDisclosure Project, plus many, many more.

Our intent is to provide a background in finding potential cures for the ESI/data management nightmare as seen through the eyes of the major players in ESI management and e-discovery:  what technology is out there, who is out there, how do you sort through all the technology, procedures, best practices, etc.  Most of these folks will be presenting and/or exhibiting at LegalTech in a few weeks so we’ll also tell you where you can find them at the show. 

And a bit later in this series we will have interviews with Jason R. Baron, Ralph Losey and Craig Ball who will put all this tsunami of “data! data! data!” in perspective for us.

But we start off this series with some interviews with some extraordinary companies that have recently come onto the ESI/e-discovery scene.  First up:  an interview with Andy Wilson, co-founder of Logik.  For our full interview with Andy click here.

For all interviews and posts in this series click here. 

19 November 2009

Reporting for The Posse List:  Gregory Bufithis, Scott Madsen and Alex Hania

Last week Georgetown Law CLE, in cooperation with the Sedona Conference, presented its 6th Annual Advanced E-Discovery Institute.  It was one of the best conferences we’ve attended on e-discovery and that is based on the content covered, the experts/luminaries in the e-discovery field that spoke at the panels, and the interaction between the audience and the panels plus the informal sessions.  Moreover, the Institute had an all-star U.S. judicial bench in attendance:  Magistrate Judge John Facciola, Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm, District Court Judge Nan Nolan, Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck, District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal, District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin and Magistrate Judge David Waxe, who participated on multiple panels, and even sat in on many of the sessions and provided input — both from the panels and the audience — and who made themselves available during the breaks and informal sessions.  It was a great “hands on learning” e-discovery experience.

The non-judicial roster of e-discovery experts was just as impressive and rather than list them all we have provided a link to the full list (click here).

The Keynote Address

Judge Lee Rosenthal gave the keynote titled Is the E-discovery Process Broken, and, If So, Can It be Fixed?

Judge Rosenthal was appointed a United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division in 1992.   She was appointed chair of the Civil Rules Committee in 2003 and served during the “restyling” of the Civil Rules and the adoption of the electronic discovery amendments. In 2007, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Rosenthal to chair the Judicial Conference Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure, which coordinates the work of the Advisory Committees for the Civil, Criminal, Evidence, Appellate, and Bankruptcy Rules.

She spent a good part of her speech on the results of a Federal Judicial Center report which surveyed federal cases that terminated at the end of 2008.  The big surprise:  the costs of civil litigation are not escalating out of control due to the mounting burden of e-discovery.  You can access the full report by clicking here.

According to the report, over 70% of the attorneys in cases involving e-discovery reported having no problems with discovery.  Disputes over e-discovery occurred in less than 2% of those cases (a fact repeated several times by the judges attending the conference) and almost all involved disputes about the form of production.

Other points Judge Rosenthal raised:

– cases that involve electronically stored information (ESI) were  more expensive than cases without ESI

– most cases settled with only about 1% coming to trial

– in settled cases, 60-70% of the attorneys said the cost of e-discovery had no bearing on the settlement

As Dennis Kiker of Fios, Inc. said in his blog post (click here) the general trend of the responses is in surprising contrast to the results of the joint report of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery (ACLS)and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IALAS) which reported that 71% of attorney surveyed believed that discovery was used as a tool to force settlements.  Dennis offers a  number of factors that might explain the discrepancy.

Some of the other points raised by Judge Rosenthal:

–  a litigation survey showed only 5% of the parties had used data sampling

– sixty percent of corporations did not have any litigation holds, which can be dangerous

- - two important cases to read on e-discovery are Twomley (the adequacy of pleadings) and Iqbal (the “facial plausibility” pleading sufficiency test applies to all federal civil actions)

– there has been a lack of success of District Court Judges to control discovery (TPL thought: the magistrates intimidate them)

– proportionality is in the national debate and an adequate set of controls need to be applied to achieve proportionality.  This was the mantra repeated throughout the 2-days of the conference

– The Sedona Conference Proclamation of Co-operation is a good starting point for collaborative e-discovery

– Effective e-discovery should include a reasonable cost component.  The ACLS and IALAS report (cited above with link) discusses 29 principles to promote effective e-discovery including early identification of issues and better control to contain costs, fact based pleading, narrow requests for production, more early discussion and more judge involvement

–  Rule 16 helps expedite discovery and contains items for courts to narrow litigation including active judicial management.  Rule 16 and 26(f) are notably underused.

Potential fixes for the system:  there are several pilot programs currently being conducted, notably one in the 7th circuit with the goal of incentivizing early discussion and e-discovery being resolved as an example of Rule 26(f) information sharing and co-operation.

And the big take-away from the Judge’s presentation:  the judges are in a good position to take a long look at e-discovery at the May 2010 Annual Meeting and Judicial Conference at Duke University where the FRCP Rules committee will revisit, among other things, judicial involvement and settlement issues.

The Sessons/Panels

There were 18 sessions/panels and we could not cover them all.  We tried to focus on those most relevant to our readership, as diverse as it is.  Click on the title to go to each summary:

The E-Discovery Case Law Update

Unified communications – the game changer in e-discovery

Advanced Search and Retrieval Technology

How E-Discovery “Fits” into Civil Litigations

E-Discovery in Federal Investigations

Cross-border E-Discovery & International Data

Concluding Judicial Roundtable on ESI Discovery Problems, Solutions

Future Georgetown Law CLE Programs

Through our new affiliation with Georgetown Law we will be proving details in the near future on Georgetown Law Center’s E-Discovery Training Academy program in March 2010.  The Academy is rather unique in that it offers a comprehensive practical training of attorneys, practice support professionals and technical specialists in the entire spectrum of legal strategies and technological services that constitute the full practice of e-discovery.  The Academy is the only program of its kind affiliated with a major law school and has gained national prominence following the success of its inaugural course of study in February, 2009.

We will also have information on Georgetown Law CLE’s 14^th Annual Corporate Counsel Institute (also to be held in March 2010) developed in cooperation with the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) which focuses on practical, relevant and comprehensive topics.  This program will be repeated in London in April as Corporate Counsel Institute – Europe.

Please provide any comments or feedback via the “Comment” box below, or email us at manager@theposselist.com

Yesterday, Fios put on an excellent webinar titled The Value of Project Management in e-Discovery (for details click here for link).   Fios will make available an audio recording of this webinar (which they do for all of their webinars) so be sure to check the link to the Fios e-Discovery Knowledge Center (see link in last paragraph below).

We were about to prepare a recap this particular webinar when Paul Easton (Managing Director at Global Colleague) produced a very thorough one which you can access with relevant links by clicking here.  As Paul neatly sums up: legal project management is cost control, schedule predictability, and risk management; with improved communication tying them all together.

As we have said in previous posts (most recently here), electronic discovery vendors and corporations rely on talented project managers to steer the e-discovery task from start to finish.   It is an area of growing sophistication.  It is an area in which many contract attorneys and other Posse List members have found work and is becoming a growing percentage of our job posts, and it comports with the continuing trend:  the “left-side” of the EDRM model is the place to be and it is driven by vendors and the corporation client.

Note:  Fios is the home of e-discovery guru Mary Mack.  Mary and Fios have provided The Posse List with loads of information on the e-discovery market — all at no charge — which we disseminate to the Posse List membership.  The above cited webinar is part of a series of webinars and webcasts which are free and you can see what is coming up by clicking here.

And use their fabulous e-Discovery Knowledge Center (click here) where you will find a wealth of information and where you can download a free copy of Mary’s e-discovery book A Process of Illumination: the practical guide to electronic discovery.  It is a great read for Posse List members who want to know the whole A-to-Z of e-discovery and understand where the document review element (the “right-side” of the EDRM where most of us reside) fits in the whole process.

Fios has announced that Chris Junker has been appointed as the company’s new CEO.  For the full press release click here.   Junker led global sales for the iManage unit for Autonomy (formerly Interwoven) for more than 10 years.  

Fios is the home of e-discovery guru Mary Mack.  Mary and Fios have provide The Posse List with loads of information on the e-discovery market — all at no charge — which we disseminate to the Posse List membership.  They also run a series of webcasts which are free and you can see what is coming up by clicking here.

The also have a fabulous e-Discovery Knowledge Center (click here) and you can download a free copy of Mary’s e-discovery book A Process of Illumination: the practical guide to electronic discovery via our website by clicking here.

The 32nd annual educational conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) starts today, August 23rd.   This year it is at the Gaylord National just outside Washington, DC in National Harbor, Maryland.

It is considered one of the premier events for ILTA members and decision-makers to come together to share their experiences as technology leaders to talk about how they best use leading technologies, and how to best optimize the value of IT in law firms and law departments.

And given the explosion of work in Europe (click here) and growing work in Asia (click here) which we have reported extensively, there will be much to learn.

It is a four day event and the Posse List team will cover as much as it can.   Content goes across 26 tracks, and it is regarded as the place to make connections.    The registation fees are going to be out of the price range for many Posse List members to be able to attend.  So we will cover as much as we can.   Through the courtesy of Peggy Wechsler, Program Director for ILTA, we have been granted several media credentials for members of our staff to attend and our colleagues at Mayer Brown will be providing us additional material. 

But the Exhibit Hall (there will be 180+ vendor booths) is the place for Posse List members to see and to connect.  To see the current list of vendors click here.   There are Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Basic Sponsors.   Contact them to obtain exhibit hall passes (click here).

As we have posted, we are working in a part of the legal industry that is unusual because it is open to sharing and collaboration, through publications, quality conferences, and trade shows, and peer networking organizations such as ILTA, LegalTech, ABATech and the ILSL Conference.

Posse List members are a vast store of untapped creativity, expertise, and wisdom.  We all know that.  Go out and make connections.   Show people your value, your worth.  Don’t be negative.  And review our suggestions to “get out there” (click here).

And keep in mind the trend we first reported last year and that has continued to grow.  It’s the movement of the lawyers who know the most about EDD and who are the best at EDD who have moved out of law firms and into the employ of EDD service providers.   This ”tectonic shift” is probably yielding a long-term result where EDD service providers will largely taking this work away from law firms and EDD will no longer be considered part of the ordinary practice of law, leaving litigation lawyers to redefine what they actually do as clients route around them to the EDD service providers who have all of the talent.

And it affects the contract attorney world.  Because one thing we have heard over and over has been amore direct trend affecting contract attorneys:  law firms and corporations have begun asking e-discovery companies and vertically integrated staffing agencies whether they can provide “enterprise wide” e-discovery solutions: managing and/or staffing projects for a law firm or corporation in any of its offices across the U.S. and/or across the globe.  Can they be “the one” vendor?  And part of this is due to a sub-trend: doing the doc reviews “local” in Europe and Asia because of blocking statute rules and data privacy.

But more importantly, going to e-discovery companies – the folks processing the data from the start – and asking “…and can you staff the review?”  Which is why companies like Catalyst, eTERA, Trilantic, etc. are landing document review work.

We will be highlighting a number of vendors next week but to start two important vendors and major sponsors of ILTA:

* Catalyst Repository Systems  (click here)  – vendor of the industry leading review platform Catalyst CR

*  Fios Inc. (click here) — providing comprehensive services and expert guidance that transform the burdensome nature of electronic discovery into a streamlined, legally defensible business process.

E-discovery guru Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel for Fios Inc., has a free ebook for you to download.  The book is titled A Process of Illumination: The Practical Guide to Electronic Discovery.

In this updated version, author Mary Mack does a masterful job of organizing, sharing, and explaining key information related to the expanding field of expertise we all know as “electronic discovery”.  Her examples, checklists, and references provide quick and concise “snapshots” of electronic discovery centric “perishable knowledge” (i.e. knowledge that can easily be forgotten) and makes the book a great primer for contract attorneys and others seeking to learn about electronic discovery, a great review source for those seeking to keep up to date on electronic discovery, and a great desk side reference source for electronic discovery professionals.

You can download the book by clicking here.

There has been much discussion recently about the emerging litigation support profession.  The profession has evolved over the last 10 years right along with the growth of electronic discovery. Estimates indicate that there are over 10,000 litigation support professionals (LSP) in the U.S.   They operate at the intersection of law and technology, helping to steward ESI through processing, analysis, review and production. You will also find litigation support professionals increasingly involved in earlier phases of the e-discovery process, such as identification, preservation, collection and discovery conference preparation.  And many of these positions are held by Posse List members/contract attorneys who have moved full-time and part-time into the field.

At LegalTech West, attended by The Posse List’s Chief Technology Officer (our coverage can be found here) , Espe Rebollar, President of the Association of Litigation Support Professionals (ALSP), and Winlock Brown, former ALSP president, outlined ALSP’s very interesting exploration of a certification process for this new profession.  There was also excellent content at the May International Litigation Support Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. (see our coverage here), with topics ranging from project management to handling foreign language data to EDD 101 for folks new to the profession.

Note:  We will expand upon this certification process in the coming weeks, and related jobs, as well as your many questions about obtaining certification in such software as the new Catalyst CR 8.5 document management and document review software (click here) being adopted by many law firms and corporations.   A certification status (as a LSP or in specific software) has helped many Posse List members to obtain work.  We are going to organize live certification classes in several cities as well as via the web.

Fios has been at the leading edge of developing support for LSPs with webcasts, white papers, checklists and other “best practices” resources to assist litigation support professionals working in the trenches of e-discovery.  You should consult Fios’ e-Discovery for Litigation Support page for more information. 

Fios has also been at the leading edge of cross-border eDiscovery and data privacy.   As we have reported in the past, U.S.-style litigation and internal investigations and e-discovery are largely alien to non-U.S. organizations.   Data collection also is far more complicated in an international context than in a purely domestic one.   We attended the Sedona conference in Barcelona last month (click here) and we had the opportunity to interview Ken Rashbaum who is a Director of Fios Consulting at Fios, Inc. and a leading expert in the area.   We’ll publish that interview next week when we post Part 5 of our Trends series (click here) and discuss opportunities in Europe for contract attorneys.