Extract from Doug Austin’s article “Information Governance is a Big Part of the Reason for the Emergence of Legal Ops”
Much of the focus historically on legal technology has been project based. A great example of that is litigation, which has a beginning (the case is filed or at least anticipated) and an end (the case is settled, dismissed or a verdict is reached in court). Each litigation case is synonymous with a project, and it must be managed effectively to help achieve the desired outcome.
eDiscovery is also project based, as evidenced by the EDRM model, which reflects a project lifecycle flow from Identification through Preservation, with the Volume of electronically stored information (ESI) diminishing as non-responsive ESI is culled out of the population and the percent of Relevance of remaining ESI rising as you move to the right of the EDRM model.
However, the enormously increased emphasis on the big circle to the left of the EDRM model – the Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) – has helped shift the focus of legal technology from being project oriented to becoming more operations oriented.
This movement has helped contribute to the rise of legal operations overall.
Evolution of the EDRM Model Illustrates the Rise in Importance of Information Governance
When you look at the evolution of the EDRM model over the years, you can see how important Information Governance has become. The very first iteration of the EDRM model back in 2005 didn’t even have a spot for Information Governance. When it was added in 2009, it was first added as “Information Management” and was just another box on the far left of the model. It wasn’t until 2014 when EDRM decided to change Information Management to Information Governance and make it a circle (I was there at that meeting).
