By Jed CawthorneInformation governance is in the air. Two days after my last article published, “ Push for Strategic Governance in Information Management ,” Forrester Research released a report called “Reboot your Information Governance Program with an Outside-In Perspective.” Cheryl McKinnon (@cherylmckinnon), an old friend, lead the creation of that report and followed it up with a blogpost, “ Information Governance: Not a Product, Not a Technology, Not a Market .” McKinnon and her colleagues suggest that we view information governance “as a corporate objective, enabled by programs, projects, priorities, people and technology.” This aligns well with my recommendation to take a strategic approach to information governance.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Information Governance Revisited
Friday, January 30, 2015
Florida Bar Winter Meeting: Craig Ball on Electronic Evidence Challenges
By Laurence Colletti with Craig BallLegal Talk Network Producer Laurence Colletti interviews electronic evidence expert Craig Ball at the 2015 Winter Meeting of The Florida Bar. Ball discusses the limitations of electronic search tools and how lawyers need to move past the delusion of the right keywords yielding perfect results.
Thinking Through the Implications of CAL: Who Does the Training?
By Jeremy PickensIt’s when you can combine the advantages of continuous learning with the flexibility that non-expert training gives you that TAR really starts to come alive. CAL means a lower total number of documents reviewed. Non-expert training means flexibility about how and when you can start the process, not to mention the ability to be massively parallel and cut down total elapsed clock time. Instead of having to wait, as you do in SAL and SPL, for your expert to have free time in order to train documents, with these two busted Myths you can hit the ground running, and be done long before your SPL or SAL may have even started.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Bridging the Consumption Gap in Legal Technology
By Stephen BerrentTechnology is powerful. IBM’s super computer Watson won Jeopardy!, and Google’s search engine knows that “a rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it ‘rokc’ and it’s still a rock. But put ‘little’ in front of [it], and it’s the capital of Arkansas.” That said, powerful technology has not yet significantly improved our practice of law. In January 2007, in what The Wall Street Journal ’s Law Blog called “a speech worth reading,” my friend Mark Chandler (the GC of Cisco) challenged the legal industry to think about changes in technology […]
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Explaining Complexities in eDiscovery (Cartoon and Clip)
The Cartoon and Clip of the Week for January 28, 2015
Daily we read, see and hear more and more about the technologies, tactics and terms of eDiscovery. This week’s cartoon and clip highlights the importance for eDiscovery practitioners and commentators to share their facts, ideas and opinions in an understandable manner (cartoon) and provides a link to one of the most informative and understandable blogs on eDiscovery, Ball in your Court, by industry expert Craig Ball (clip).
Ball in your Court: Musing on E-Discovery & Computer Forensics
Click here to find the latest musings from Craig Ball on his Ball in your Court blog.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
DESI VI Workshop on Machine Learning in E-Discovery & Information Governance
Organizing Committee:
- Jason R. Baron, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP; University of Maryland
- Jack G. Conrad, Thomson Reuters
- Amanda Jones, H5
- Dave Lewis, David D. Lewis Consulting
- Douglas W. Oard, University of Maryland
Purpose: The DESI VI workshop (June, 8, 2015, San Diego) aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to explore innovation and the development of best practices for application of search, classification, language processing, data management, visualization, and related techniques to institutional and organizational records in e-discovery, information governance, public records access, and other legal settings.
Friday, January 23, 2015
What CENTCOM Can Teach You About Cloud Security
By Sekhar SarukkaiIndividuals calling themselves the “CyberCaliphate” hacked into the Twitter feed for the U.S. military’s Central Command last week, and for 40 minutes posted photos, links, and videos before the account was shut down. They also gained access to Central Command’s YouTube profile, updating the banner image and posting Islamic State propaganda videos. While no confidential or top secret information was stolen, and hackers did not gain access to the U.S. Department of Defense’s network, the incident illustrates the risks government agencies face as they increasingly rely on cloud services to fulfill their mission and communicate with the outside world. […]
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Podcast: The Government’s Dark Data: A Decade of Discovery
By Sharon Nelson, John Simek and Guest Jason BaronIn this episode of Digital Detectives, Sharon Nelson and John Simek interview Jason Baron about information governance, dark data, open government, and his role in The Decade of Discovery. Baron talks about the increasing amount of electronic data affecting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the discussion e-discovery experts need to have about providing public access to government records.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
2014 Year-End E-Discovery Update
By Gibson DunnIn our Mid-Year E-Discovery Update , we reported that 2014 was shaping up to be the “year of technology” in e-discovery. The remainder of the year more than lived up to those expectations.Powerful new data analytics tools have become available for search and review, predictive coding pricing is becoming more accessible and its use appears to be gaining more traction, e-discovery technologies are becoming available through the cloud, and technologies that automate aspects of information governance are becoming increasingly available. New technologies are also creating new challenges, such as the increasing use of texting and other applications on […]
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Every Form of Recall Has Its Price
By Herbert L Roitblat, Ph.D.When considering the measurement of eDiscovery accuracy, there are many alternatives available. As I have said elsewhere , measurement of eDiscovery accuracy is a critical enterprise, but the pendulum may have swung too far toward complex measurement. We should not let our concern about measurement overwhelm our process. The most common of measure of eDiscovery accuracy is Recall which is: The challenge comes from the observation that we do not know the value of these two variables exactly. If we knew exactly which documents were responsive, then we would not […]
IP Rights in Big Data
By Katherine Spelman and Holly TowieIn our last Big Data blog posting, we cautioned that the protection of the intellectual property rights (IP) in Big Data may warrant its own focus. While there are legitimate concerns about finding IP in data, because data may be an inert lump of code, bits, or pieces of information, it is worthwhile to think about the different kinds of IP that arise in conjunction with and in the context of Big Data. This blog entry focuses on the IP opportunities ‘in relation to’ Big Data.The IP asset candidates to consider for Big Data are in four possible categories: utility patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Introducing “ei-Recall” – A New Gold Standard for Recall Calculations in Legal Search – Part Three
By Ralph LoseyFirst Example of How to Calculate Recall Using the ei-Recall Method: Here we assume a review project of 100,000 documents. By the end of the search and review, when we could no longer find any more relevant documents, we decided to stop and run our ei-Recall quality assurance test. We had by then found and verified 8,000 relevant documents, the True Positives . That left […]
eDiscovery Challenges: Challenges Faced By Intellectual Property Litigators
Lexbe provides eDiscovery software and services for legal professionals at law firms, corporations, and government agencies.
Intellectual Property litigation presents a number of unique discovery and review challenges for the involved attorneys, law firms, and in-house counsel, corporations and organizations. Legal issues can require analysis not only of patent, copyright and trademark law, but complex contract and joint venture, development and entity issues. Also modern IP cases often are international in scope. The subject matter being disputed in IP cases can be highly variable, with litigation spanning industries like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to electronics manufacturing and advanced software algorithms.
What most IP cases do have in common is a high level of data complexity, usually involving multiple parties, custodians, experts and document sources and formats. Document counts in IP cases can often be in the tens of millions, and can require extensive resources to comprehensively process and review. Federal courts handling a large amount of IP cases may include compliance with local rules concerning specific eDiscovery or Production requirements that must be met.
In spite of the overall complexity of these cases, standard litigation deadlines must still be met, making review speed and efficiency a critically important factor in patent and other IP cases. In such complex cases, the ‘key’ or ’hot’ documents may be less obvious, or simply buried in massive data collections. Case facts and issues in IP litigation may also be especially complicated and interdependent, necessitating robust case management features and functionality.
Click here to learn more about the Lexbe eDiscovery Platform for Intellectual Property Litigators.
Click here for a demonstration of Lexbe eDiscovery Platform features, a 15 day trial, or for any additional information.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
A TAR is Born: Continuous Active Learning Brings Increased Savings While Solving Real-World Review Problems
By John TredennickIn July 2014, attorney Maura Grossman and professor Gordon Cormack introduced a new protocol for Technology Assisted Review that they showed could cut review time and costs substantially. Called Continuous Active Learning (“CAL”), this new approach differed from traditional TAR methods because it employed continuous learning throughout the review, rather than the one-time training used by most TAR technologies. Barbra Streisand in ‘A Star is Born’ Their peer-reviewed research paper, “ Evaluation of Machine-Learning Protocols for Technology-Assisted Review in Electronic Discovery ,” also showed that using random documents was the least effective method for training a TAR system. Overall, […]
Friday, January 16, 2015
Soon you’ll get paid to Facebook. Sort of…
By Winston EdmondsonHow would you like to get paid to use Facebook, Inc.? Sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it? Well it’s coming. Let me clarify… Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to send you money for every status update you like, or for every photo that you share. No, the cash won’t be coming from Facebook. In the near future, your employer will pay you to Facebook. It’s a complete 180, I know. Right now, your boss has Facebook blocked at […]
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Information Governance: Not A Product, Not A Technology, Not A Market
By Cheryl McKinnonInformation Governance is red hot right now, and it was time for Forrester contribute a view on how IG helps companies meet their core corporate missions. Of course, better, consistent fulfillment of compliance obligations is essential, but so are objectives such as customer service, revenue growth, and improved agility in oh-so competitive markets. IG is not just about getting rid of junk content, it is – more importantly – about instilling trust in the data and communication we use to run our businesses.Software is not a silver bullet for information governance. Look beyond vendor hype – IG is not something to go buy so you can say your company has it. Look at IG as an evergreen corporate objective, enabled by programs, policies, people- and yes, a range of technologies.I’m going to add to the IG definition war this week, by describing information governance as:“A holistic strategy for using and managing information to meet business objectives. Information governance assures the quality of content and data, maximizes its value, and ensures that security, privacy, and life-cycle requirements are met”.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Size of the US Legal Market by Type of Client
By Bill HendersonIn a competitive market, the threshold question, asked by potential entrants and those who might finance them, is often the same: “what is the size of the available (or addressible) market?” Because lawyers and law schools are feeling unprecedented economic pressure, I thought it would be worthwhile to run this exercise for the U.S. legal industry and break it down by type of client.The figures above are estimates of 2014 receipts going to organizations and individuals in the business of providing legal services. My calculations are derived from US Census Bureau data. They exclude the cost of in-house and government lawyers. More granular calculation details will be laid out in a forthcoming publication.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Is Your eDiscovery Vendor Part of the Solution? (Cartoon and Clip)
The Cartoon and Clip of the Week for January 14, 2015
As we move closer to LegalTech New York 2015, the largest legal technology event of the year, eDiscovery practitioners and consumers will read, see and hear more and more about how specific vendors can help them solve discovery and review challenges. This week’s cartoon and clip highlights one important vendor qualification question (cartoon) and provides an alphabetical listing of some of the leading eDiscovery providers in the market today (clip).
A Short List of Leading eDiscovery Providers
Based on a compilation of research from analyst firms and industry expert reports in the electronic discovery arena, the following list (click here) provides a short listing that may be useful in the consideration of electronic discovery providers.
This listing is taken primarily from eDiscovery provider mentions in selected key formal industry reports and surveys published between August 2011 and today. Where appropriate, the list has been adjusted for industry mergers and acquisitions, with the primary company listed as the recognized eDiscovery provider.
Click here to access a short list of over 150 leading eDiscovery providers.
Monday, January 12, 2015
eDiscovery Challenges: Challenges Faces By Corporate Counsel
Lexbe provides eDiscovery software and services for legal professionals at law firms, corporations, and government agencies.
Corporate legal and IT departments have an increasing need for cost-efficient eDiscovery/document management software and litigation support services to handle exponentially larger discovery collections and document reviews. It is critically important for corporate counsel to maintain control over and access to sensitive case documents with an internal software solution that won’t break the bank. All too often, outside counsel is less sensitive to security and billing issues than internal litigation staff, and unexpected discovery cost overruns can create serious disagreements and permanant changes to the dynamics of a case. Sometimes, a temporary ‘neutral territory’ is also needed to conduct reviews. Existing internal solutions may not avail themselves to the kind inter-office collaboration that may be required when working with outside counsel.
The Lexbe eDiscovery Platform has been designed to minimize eDiscovery processing, review, and production costs while maintaining industry leading feature performance and functionality. With no user fees, case fees, or hidden costs, Lexbe eDiscovery Platform provides a litigation document management solution that allows corporate counsel to maintain control over discovery collections at a low and predictable monthly cost. Our web-based system can be accessed from any browser and across both PC and MAC operating systems to allow for fast, real-time collaboration between internal legal staff and outside counsel.
Click here to learn more about the Lexbe eDiscovery Platform for Corporate Counsel.
Click here for a demonstration of Lexbe eDiscovery Platform features, a 15 day trial, or for any additional information.
To learn more about Lexbe, visit Lexbe.com
Thursday, January 8, 2015
InfoGov Challenge: Zombie Apocalypse Devices & File Shares
One significant ongoing information governance challenge is how to deal with the “Zombie” devices and file shares that remain after employees depart for one reason or another, or that are uncovered during merger & acquisition activities. Zombie devices and data can include laptops or other personal computing devices, and previously assigned file share space. The devices and file shares aren’t live in the sense that people are actively using them, but they’re not sufficiently dead as to permit decent burial or disposition. Like in the horror shows, zombie devices and data can cause considerable disruption if they just keep […]
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Investing in the Business of eDiscovery? (Cartoon and Clip)
Daily we read, see and hear more and more about the many cutting edge technologies and business models associated with the delivery of eDiscovery solutions. This week’s cartoon and clip highlights one historical example of an aggressive investment approach to technology (cartoon) and provides a chronological listing of some of the major merger, acquisition and investment events surrounding eDiscovery related companies between 2001 and today (clip).
An Overview of Merger, Acquisition and Investment Activities in eDiscovery
Click here to follow chronologically some of the most interesting merger, acquisition and investment events in eDiscovery since 2001.
Text Analysis 101 – A Basic Understanding for Business Users: Document Classification
From the Aylien Text Analysis BlogThe automatic classification of documents is an example of how Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be leveraged to enable machines to better understand human language. By classifying text, we are aiming to assign one or more classes or categories to a document or piece of text, making it easier to manage and sort the documents. Manually categorizing and grouping text sources can be extremely laborious and time-consuming, especially for publishers, news sites, blogs or anyone who deals with a lot of content. Broadly speaking, there are two classes of ML techniques: supervised and unsupervised. […]
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
January 2015: A Quick Merger, Acquisition and Investment Update
Provided as a non-comprehensive overview of over 100 key and publicly announced eDiscovery related mergers, acquisitions and investments since 2001, the following listing (click here) highlights key industry activities through the lens of announcement date, acquired company, acquiring or investingcompany and acquisition amount (if known).Based on an informal and non-all inclusive tracking of mergers, acquisitions and investments in and around the eDiscovery market there have been over 200 events (merger, acquisition or investment) since 2001. If one simply looks at events on a year to year basis, it does appear that the pulse rate of events has strongly mirrored the market as a whole.Events were strong in 2014 (just over 30 events in 2014) up from 21 in 2013 and down from the 14 year peak of almost 50 events in 2012.
- 2015 – 2 Events
- 2014 – 33 Events
- 2013 – 21 Events
- 2012 – 47 Events
- 2011 – 22 Events
- 2010 – 19 Events
- 2009 – 12 Events
- 2008 – 10 Events
- 2007 – 8 Events
- 2006 – 17 Events
- 2005 – 5 Events
- 2004 – 4 Events
- 2003 – 1 Event
- 2002 – 1 Event
- 2001 – 1 Event
From an observer’s point of view, it appears that three key areas driving investments:
- The need to increase technology/service capability through the purchase of new/ complementary technology.
- The need to increase revenue by increasing sales and support infrastructure.
- The need to increase revenue by buying access to clients.
Some of the most notable events of the last several years include:
- Microsoft Letter of Intent to Purchase Equivio (2014) $200M
- UBIQ IPO (2013) $104.5M
- Symantec Acquisition of Clearwell Systems (2011) $390M • HP Purchase of Autonomy (2011) $11.7B
It does appear the the pulse rate of events will continue to accelerate, especially in light of the fact that many current providers have passed or are reaching the point where they need to either upgrade or replace core technologies with newer, more efficient capability.
Big Data Speaks Loudly and Carries a Big Stick
By Katherine Spelman and Holly Towie“Speak softly and carry a big stick” connotes a policy of beginning gently but holding a decisive weapon in reserve. Big Data doesn’t do that. When Big Data ‘speaks,’ it tends to blurt out its conclusion and can have an immediate impact, deserved or undeserved, because Big Data is not based on careful statistical sampling and is not aimed at determining causation. Big Data correlates masses of good, bad and indifferent data, ie , it can be ‘messy’ and its correlations are not necessarily accurate relative to a desired question. So what will happen when ‘the data’ indicates an […]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)