Extract from Doug Austin’s article “eDiscovery Competence is a Challenge Not Being Talked About Enough”
As I wrote about a few weeks ago, eDiscovery Today recently released the 2022 State of the Industry Report regarding industry trends for eDiscovery.
One of the questions I asked that 281 respondents answered was “What do you think is the eDiscovery challenge that not enough people in the industry are talking about?” There were nine selections to choose from, plus an “Other” write-in option. With that many selections, you would think the results would be evenly distributed.
But it wasn’t. The top choice of survey respondents was “Lack of eDiscovery Competence within the Legal Profession” at 30%. The second most selected choice was “Discovery of Collaboration App Data” at 12.9%. It was the second year in a row that “Lack of eDiscovery Competence” was the top choice.
Enforcing the Duty for Technical Competence
As you may know, lawyers have an ethical duty to competence as outlined by Rule 1.1: Competence from the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. But it’s Comment 8 to Rule 1.1 that gets the most attention from legal tech and eDiscovery professionals.
