or litigators, nothing is as tedious as the beginning of discovery in a big case. First there is document collection. Then there’s document review, Bates stamping, photocopying and delivery to the other side. It’s a process that makes a lot of associates wonder what they were thinking when they signed up to take the LSAT.
But a handful of vendors are promising a new, painless approach to big-ticket discovery called e-discovery. Companies like Seattle’s Applied Discovery Inc., Portland, Ore.’s Fios Inc., Seattle’s Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc. (EED) and Eden Prairie, Minn.’s Ontrack Data International Inc. move all of a party’s electronic documents into a vast, electronic database. Attorneys can then search the database by keyword or concept. This eliminates boxes of paper-and a bunch of associate hours.
