What Are Your Clients Really Saying About eDiscovery?
A new survey looks at how clients see the discovery landscape.
Lawyers offer a lot of lip service to how earnestly they “listen to the client.” And it’s not entirely untrue. Obviously, Biglaw will take to heart any complaint raised by the folks paying the bills. On the other hand, how often do firms seek out input from clients? Because if lawyers aren’t proactive, they can miss what concerns clients the most. And blindspots are even more likely with tasks that are the historical domain of lawyers — work that outside counsel has performed, and excelled at, for years.
When it comes to discovery, not only has the role of lawyers in the process shifted radically, the very nature of the task is in constant flux. Techniques and tools that sufficed last year may be woefully inadequate for the challenges of a litigation in 2017. Are clients and lawyers on the same page when it comes to the state of discovery?
A recent survey by the Cowen Group (and sponsored by NightOwl Discovery) asked Fortune 500 companies about their eDiscovery takes and trends. Are the results what Biglaw lawyers expect?
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What are the top pain points clients face in 2017?
It turns out the sheer variety of data sources out there are top of mind for clients. Phone calls, emails, texts, tweets, Chat Roulette… is everything out there getting captured in discovery? Nothing is more frustrating than discovering, months after the fact, that extra tranche of documents you thought you’d put to bed.
Just ask James Comey.
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Clients feel the same way and just want comfort that they won’t be forced to take the professionally embarrassing step of admitting that they failed to produce the entire universe of responsive material. They aren’t even as concerned about the exploding volume of data as they are about data hiding in cyber nooks and crannies that lawyers and vendors might miss on the front end.
Based on the results of this survey, clients are looking inward when it comes to solving most of these problems:
But firms and vendors can’t sleep on these results because even though clients lean toward insourcing to solve most of their pain-point problems, there’s more opportunity than crisis in these numbers for outside counsel and service providers. Overall, work is up — 67 percent of the Fortune 500 reported an uptick in Corporate eDiscovery work, 77 percent of survey respondents hope to increase their usage of AI and advanced analytics over the next 12 months, and two-thirds see their eDiscovery work increasing over the next 6 months. In-house counsel don’t have the resources to pull this off on their own. Ever wary of needless spending, in-house counsel will try to insource through efficiency; 85 percent of respondents don’t intend to add new staff to deal with these problems, presenting a rich opportunity to lawyers capable of guiding clients through this process.
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That’s roughly 37 percent of respondents looking outside the company to either firms or vendors for help — even more once they realize “efficiency” is a nice buzzword that rarely materializes.
All this is to say that this work is out there waiting for you if you’re able to show clients you’re really listening.
(You can check out the whole survey on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
