The Money Pit
In their book "Evaluating the Electronic Discovery Capabilities of Outside Law Firms: A Model Request for Information and Analysis," authors Jeffrey Ritter (a recipient of the American Bar Association’s 2004 Cyberspace Law Excellence Award) and Karen Worstell (Chief Information Securty Officer at Microsoft) assert that the greatest economic risk companies face with electronic discovery is choosing the wrong law firm. Conversely, they explain how law firms can utilize the Model RFI (Request for Information) to assess electronic discovery readiness by evaluating their resources, services and tools to better serve their clients.
Three important factors to consider:
- Establish practice groups to address e-discovery and records management issues. The lawyers in these groups may assist other litigators at the firm to deal with the e-discovery issues arising in their cases.
- Retain Special e-Discovery Counsel to assist lead counsel will likely offer cost savings that can be achieved through optimal practices including using tools that they have already licensed or developed, applying streamlined and cost-effective procedures for large-scale document reviews, judiciously using and managing e-discovery vendors, and even, on occasion, winning cost-shifting orders.
- Hire National e-Discovery Counsel to handle e-discovery issues in all of the litigation matters nationally and/or internationally. The objective is to assure consistent practices and procedures as well as privilege determinations and other document decisions from one case to the next.
To learn more about Special e-Discovery Counsel, see Cohen's article on this topic.
