The 451 Group Releases E-Discovery and E-Disclosure Report

According to the "3rd Annual eDiscovery Survey of Illinois Lawyers," an end user survey of 185 legal professionals conducted to understand their level of exposure and experience with electronic discovery vendors and products included mentions of companies such as Applied Discovery, Kroll Ontrack, FTI Consulting and Huron Consulting.

Four of the key findings noted in the Executive Overview are:

• Corporate e-discovery in-sourcing continues as customers adopt software and services over reliance on law firms or wholly outsourcing the process.
• Many companies still lack repeatable business processes for litigation, and rely on existing internal resources for meeting e-discovery requirements on an ad hoc basis – but half of the users in our survey intend to buy e-discovery products/services in 2010.
• Judicial guidelines and international regulations defining e-discovery protocols are still emerging, lagging actual e-discovery practices.
• Information governance systems and e-discovery-enabled archives have gained traction for proactive litigation preparedness as enterprises struggle with data growth and fragmented information management.

The Bottom Line noted in the Executive Summary is:

• Despite a flat, recessionary 2009 for many e-discovery vendors, there is significant opportunity in the market at the right price and functionality, especially for tools with a broader information governance use case – most businesses still lag in adoption and have not committed to a vendor or product strategy.

The report can be found on The 451 Group website.