Survey: Resource Deprivation Is Biggest Challenge for Managing eDiscovery Activities

Global News

03
May
2016

Editor

Exterro^® Inc., the preferred provider of software specifically designed for in-house legal and IT teams at Global 2000 and Am Law 200 organizations, today announced the results of their recent survey on the top challenges in managing e-discovery activities.

According to the 100 Legal and IT professionals that participated in the survey, resource deprivation based on limited worker bandwidth and limited technology was the biggest challenge (36% of respondents) in managing e-discovery activities.

"Many of the challenges faced by legal and IT professionals in managing e-discovery activities can be linked to reactive, fire drill practices for meeting litigation and compliance demands. These survey results show that there is a large opportunity for legal teams to embrace project management principles and technology to increase productivity and ensure defensible legal practices. At Exterro, we fundamentally believe that when organizations invest in project management principles and technology, e-discovery can be managed, measured, and ultimately, optimized," says Bill Piwonka, Chief Marketing Officer at Exterro.

Survey Highlights:

• There are a number of reasons cited in the survey that made resource deprivation the number one challenge, including limited resources from employees designated to work on e-discovery tasks and a lack of sufficient technology to conduct e-discovery tasks. One Deputy General Counsel at an Oil & Gas Company said, "We have a search tool that allows us to capture ESI but not necessarily to reduce the volume of ESI to a more manageable level for review. Our old e-discovery tool is dying a slow death and cannot keep up with current demand."
• Legal professionals struggle with the lack of a consistent process, with 80% of respondents rating this issue as a challenge. With each case being different from the other and new e-discovery obstacles to account for (social, text, mobile data, etc.), Legal and IT teams are left scrambling to meet tight deadlines. An attorney at an Insurance Company said, "We have multiple clients with myriad processes. It is difficult to implement one process in our office that matches the clientele's varied systems."
• Poor communication is a challenge for IT teams; having multiple players within multiple departments inside and outside the organization make effectively communicating throughout the e-discovery process a real challenge for IT and Legal. "Not all the parties are involved throughout the entire process, making it difficult to determine if we are managing the process in the best possible way," said an IT Specialist at Biotechnology Company.

For full survey results, see the attached infographic, which is also available for download here.