Document discovery, especially electronic document discovery, has exploded in the past few years. Vendors in that space dominated LegalTechs booths. A quantophrenic tally of vendors by categories at LegalTech tells how much the market has reached terminal velocity (See my post of Feb. 8, 2006 defining quantophrenia as metrics mania.)
Consider these categories and the numbers of vendors at LegalTech who classified themselves in it:
Under Software: “Document Management” 38; “Imaging Scanning” 17; “Information Management” 23; “Electronic Discovery” 31; and “Litigation Support” 37.
Under Services: “Electronic Discovery” 45; and “Litigation Support” 52.
The two “Electronic Discovery” categories had 12 vendors listed in both, which means 64 different vendors between software and services. The two “Litigation Support” categories also had 12 vendors in common, leaving 77 different vendors offering either software or services, but not both.
Enough. I did not compare the “Electronic Discovery” vendor set to the “Litigation Support” set. My point from this admittedly flawed and artificial research is merely that law departments that are forced to come to grips with expensive, complicated, fast-changing and crucial document discovery have hundreds of vendors clamoring for selection.