At Lovells, we’ve been successfully using technology to address discovery needs for years. Recently, we have noticed a shift in what we are asking the technologies to do. It’s not about the growth of electronic data, but rather, how we use technology to extract data and the type of information to be extracted.
The traditional strength of databases when used in discovery is in finding previously agreed words or phrases. But a key issue is to identify personal data that has been inadvertently collected as part of the discovery process. This is a growing issue for us as a multinational firm, because many of our users treat their work e-mail accounts as their own private accounts and don’t delete e-mails after use. Couple this with unfocused collection practices, and a significant number of personal e-mails can end up in law firms’ databases.
