LegalTech Proves Archiving and eDiscovery Still Hot
Another year, another LegalTech show. While some things never change – lots of chotzches, disconnects between legal and IT folks, conflict between law firms and an in-house approach – this year’s show had a very different feel from years past. There were no huge announcements this year; the news was more focused on how to cut costs with technology. The traffic at the booths was generally slower, but there was a good amount of people and anecdotal evidence points to potential buyers being more qualified. Maybe 2009 will go down as the LegalTech where serious buyers showed up.
Mimosa continued to hand out “Email Archiving For Dummies” books. These are always a big hit with the legal crowd, who often seem overwhelmed by the number of technologies out their purporting to solve the eDiscovery problem. The good news is that the lawyers stopping by the Mimosa booth already understood the IT benefits (storage cost savings, specifically) that archiving can deliver in addition to the proactive eDiscovery readiness it provides. Many are ready to really enage with their CIOs in projects that will cut costs – focused on reducing the amount of data to be processed and reviewed.
I did get inquiries about when a full-blown eDiscovery tool that did it all would be available. While there are companies that claim to offer such technology, most are skeptical. This approach has yet to work (ECM suites have been around for almost a decade and instead of solving problems, have really made things worse in a lot of cases). Most of the prospects I talk to are still taking a best-of-breed approach – starting with high-volume content sources like email that can be an eDiscovery nightmare. The maturity level of organizations is simply not there to support a more holistic approach. Organizations need more time to create tenable policies, improve communication between IT and legal, and understand how they consume information assets. We’ll get there over time, but it’s a longer horizon than we thought five years ago.
Certainly, concern about the economy buzzed. Law firms are laying off, even as the amount of litigation goes up. To me, this means that corporations must manage thier law firms more closely than ever, and that means have the right infrastructure in place to quickly turn information over, and to ensure that the information turned over is the smallest amount possible. As the government bailout continues, it’s likely that regulations will increase – and scrutiny of corporate activities will increase as well. Those not ready to comply will face sanctions and embarrassment.
LegalTech confirmed that eDiscovery is still a huge driver of technology purchasing. The economy will affect corporate budgets and spending, but there is a great business case to be made for archiving and eDiscovery. Let me know if you’d like to talk about how to make that business case. We’ve got tools that can help.
