Top 5 Tips to Select the Best E-Discovery Solution

The recent past has seen a rapid increase in the number of regulatory audits, lawsuits and corporate investigations, making organizations spend more and more money on e-discovery solutions. And the skyrocketing cost of e-discovery services is now a major challenge worrying most organizations. While on the one hand, the cost of e-discovery management services is very high, on the other, most e-discovery companies are unable to deliver value to their clients.


And this scenario has given rise to a number of apprehensions about adopting e-discovery solutions. The fact however is that ediscovery services can be immensely beneficial and can give high ROI, if companies clearly evaluate the features of the services offered, and choose an efficient and cost-effective e-discovery partner. So what can organizations do, to determine the right partner for e-discovery?



Here are some tips that can be helpful in choosing the most appropriate e-discovery solution for your organization:


Tip1 - Ensure industry standards are met: Every e-discovery solution should cover the entire range of processes as defined by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), which is a standard prescribed by the e-discovery industry. Hence, make sure that your solution covers everything from information management, identification, preservation, and collection, to processing and early case analysis. This can save you a lot of trouble.


Tip 2- Check for flexibility and affordability: Ediscovery solutions should be executed without impacting employee productivity. This is an essential feature to ensure that there is no disruption in the production environment. Also, the solutions adopted should be cost-effective and should guarantee better ROI. 


Tip 3- Assess search capabilities: A good e-discovery solution should be able to provide sophisticated and rich search capabilities. It should be able to perform natural language-based searches in email messages, attachments, common metadata and simple text strings. It should be able to differentiate between names, verbs and documents. For example, ‘Will’, could mean a name, a legal document or simply a verb. An effective e-discovery solution will be able to easily differentiate these and provide accurate results. 


Tip 4- Estimate time required for deployment: Some solutions take several weeks to be deployed. This can prove to be a major disadvantage, as this involves a long wait, before you can begin accessing, categorizing or reporting information. Good e-discovery solutions are self-contained and are very easy to deploy. 


Tip 5- Opt for a proactive e-discovery solution: It is important to choose a solution that uses real-time policy management for archiving, reviewing, retrieving, deleting, retaining or producing data electronically. While an automated and proactive e-discovery solution can go a long way in protecting your company’s brand, it is also critical for early case assessment. 


Where most solutions in the market are capable of organizing and managing unstructured information, or identifying and preserving useable data, a good ediscovery solution, is one that can completely integrate into your business processes and perform well, without disrupting core business activities.