Extract from Jim Gill’s article “What is Live EDA and is it the Future of Digital Communications Investigations?“
Investigations into people’s digital communications have taken place since the advent of email. I’m sure all of us remember the first time someone hit “reply-all” to an organization-wide listserv with a less than appropriate comment meant for a single person. Well things have only gotten worse from there.
Even in the past few weeks, articles highlighting investigations ranging from the NFL to the Boston literary scene have revealed the need for insight and analytics into electronic communications. But because of the time-consuming and costly process these investigations can take, they may be backburnered until they can’t be ignored any longer, instead of being handled quickly and effectively to mitigate risk for all involved.
According to the LegalTech Publishing 2021 eDiscovery Buyer’s Guide, “Unstructured data [has grown] dramatically from the increased use of collaboration and file-sharing platforms as well as the work-from-anywhere trend. The expanding volume includes increasingly complex and diverse data, making it hard to use traditional eDiscovery software…[to locate] hard-to-understand data early, control litigation costs, and reach better, faster outcomes.”
The Gartner 2021 Market Guide for eDiscovery supports this, stating, “As organizations adapt to work-from-home practices, infrastructure and operations leaders need new capabilities to better manage the eDiscovery of workstream collaboration products and to securely conduct eDiscovery remotely,” by “using eDiscovery software vendor and service provider offerings that ‘extend left’ in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) to establish proactive information governance.”
