The three biggest problems in e-discovery are volume, volume and volume. Until now, we, as a community, have taken a largely piecemeal approach to solving that problem, but any real answer will require a systems approach to electronically stored information (ESI).
An organization’s ESI is not just a pile of electronic files. It is part of the entire “ecosystem” of that organization. Dealing with ESI on an ad hoc basis is common in e-discovery—trying to manage it when a case is pending is wasteful and becoming prohibitively expensive. Attempts to “move left” in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model to manage information earlier in the process are helpful, but not enough. Attempts to move toward information governance as a method to control volume are in the right direction, but still not enough.
