I believe that the challenges of coping with electronic data discovery (EDD) will change the way in which litigation support is viewed within law firms, and that it offers an opportunity for IT to sit at the heart of the legal process.
When questioned in a recent vendor survey, 80% of lawyers said that they expected that their technology departments would host the client’s EDD material. This might be an instinctive reaction but there are significant pitfalls. One firm tried to do this with 3.5GB of unknown data and it crashed their entire computer system for two days, until the managing partner and the IT director threw it out and swore never to try such a thing again. Are your lawyers aware of just what they might be committing the firm to when they make this kind of offer?
