The greatest obstacle in most discovery exercises is the increasing data volumes, providing new and evolving challenges for all discovery matters.
So much of this information will be completely irrelevant for what we are after. The challenge is how do quickly and efficiently get to the key information that we need?
No one wants to have lawyers investing their time (and the clients’ money), looking at information that may be totally irrelevant – time and money that can be better utilised elsewhere. Far too often one of the largest and completely unnecessary costs of the discovery process is lawyers spending their time reviewing entirely irrelevant information.
Firstly, we need to get rid of what we don’t need to enable the legal team to devote their energies to looking at the most important information.
Let’s have lawyers look at the right documents
No matter how much we want to simplify the discovery process – lawyers still must look at documents. However, we can do a lot more to assist lawyers look at more potentially relevant material.
This requires considerably more pro-active work, and much earlier in the process. It is worth investing an hour at the outset of a matter to work out the best way to approach the discovery exercise. The time invested at the outset could save thousands down the track, not to mention lessening the burden for you and your firm.
Some great eDiscovery tools to assist
We are fortunate that many of the eDiscovery software options enable us to be smarter to remove irrelevant material and target our approach to get to what we need.
It is not always the use of Technology Assisted Review (TAR), or the utilisation of other powerful technologies that will be right for you – not all matters require predictive coding. Some easy wins like targeting key individuals, a date range or running search terms, maybe a great starting point !
An option that allow us to get to the most important information quicker and cheaper, whilst removing irrelevant material, surely cannot be a bad thing !
On your next matter, invest time at the outset to target an approach to remove irrelevant material and get to only what you need.
