Dark matter accounts for the bulk of the universe, we can’t see it, don’t understand it and it pushes the universe to expand faster and faster. So too with e-discovery.
These days, the ether is filled with almost hysterical talk about the costs of e-discovery (See my posts of Aug. 5, 2005: “70-80 percent of litigation spending goes to discovery”; Aug. 24, 2005: spending controls crash into electronic discovery costs; Oct. 1, 2005: e-liminating e-discovery expenses; April 12, 2006: calculating Total Cost of Electronic Discovery; and Jan. 6, 2006: urban legend on costs for on e-mail discovery.).
Hundreds of vendors have poured into the space (See my posts of March 4, 2007: e-discovery consolidation: Merrill buys LextraNet; May 13, 2007: RR Donnelley gets involved; June 18, 2007: document review: the next e-discovery; Oct. 21, 2005: Attenex’s proportionality framework for e-discovery; and Oct. 29, 2007: electronic-evidence data-discovery vendors.).
The vendors promote all kinds of technology for e-discovery (See my posts of May 3, 2007: technology to optimize document review; May 7, 2006: semantic network mapping; and Feb. 6, 2007: litigation hold orders.).
To help law departments cope with e-discovery, several organizations have sprung up (See my posts of Feb. 14, 2007: Corporate E-Discovery Forum; Feb. 18, 2007: Corporate Forum and Sedona Conference; Jan. 28, 2008: Women in E-Discovery; and Jan. 27, 2008: Association of Litigation Support Professionals.).
Everywhere you look, large law departments have set up internal discovery teams (See my posts of Feb. 25, 2007: Pfizer; March 23, 2007: Verizon; Feb. 1, 2006: Altria; Jan. 16, 2007: roles important for any internal e-discovery team; and Nov. 24, 2005: Cisco’s in-house litigation document infrastructure.).
Other aspects of e-discovery appear among this blog’s posts (See my posts of Jan. 30, 2006: hire former employees for tasks that support litigation (Purdue Pharma); and Oct. 8, 2007: An in-house guide to e-discovery practices and resources.).