eDiscovery Daily Blog

• July 21, 2017

As someone who writes a blog daily for (part of) my living, I can attest that it can be a challenge to stay on top of eDiscovery trends and case law.  I try to do my best to provide some of that to the readers of this blog and, when it comes to case law, we provide posts on about 60 to 70 cases each year (we’re over 400 unique cases covered lifetime).  But, here’s a resource that provides access to even more case law, and several other great resources, as well.

eDiscovery Assistant™ is a site developed by ESI Attorneys that was built by attorneys and information law practitioners to provide several resources to help people get started — faster and with confidence — in eDiscovery.  Those resources include: case law, rules, checklists, forms, glossary of terms and (coming soon) a learning center with short, practical videos that explain concepts users can implement in their own eDiscovery operations.

When you open eDiscovery Assistant, you begin with a dashboard that shows you recent case law on the left hand side and a History of your activities on the right hand side to enable you to get back to something you looked at previously.  A list of Favorites that you’ve created is listed in the lower left side of the form and cite lists of case law searches is shown in the lower right side of the form.  Along the top of the form is a menu to enable you quickly navigate to search for case law, locate Federal, State and other rules, access a resource of checklists and forms for best eDiscovery practices, access your cite lists and access a glossary of eDiscovery-related terms.  Here’s an example of what the dashboard looks like:

According to the eDiscovery Assistant site, they have a database of over 5,000 eDiscovery decisions.  Each of those is categorized by the types of issues being addressed, so if you want to click on a type of issue to see how many case decisions and opinions there are about it, simply click on the issue to pull up all of those cases.  For example, clicking on the Technology Assisted Review (TAR) issue pulls up 39 results.  You can also perform date range searches and look for specific names (such as the name of a judge in whose courtroom you may find yourself) and other terms.  The application enables you to view the case decision and download it to PDF if desired.  As somebody who does a lot of research into key eDiscovery case law, it’s nice to have it all in one place.

The Checklists and Forms page includes over 40 checklists and forms in a variety of areas ranging from identifying relevant sources of ESI to legal holds to meet & confer/Rule 26 conferences, with forms and letters including sample preservation letters, sample clawback agreement and chain of custody forms.  It’s a great resource for those who need some help in getting started in several key areas of the eDiscovery process.

I spoke to Kelly Twigger, CEO of ESI Attorneys and eDiscovery Assistant, about the goal for the platform and why she decided to build the platform in the first place:

“I built eDiscovery Assistant to be the practice tool I wanted for my practice. I wanted to find case law by issue FAST. I wanted to know what discovery decisions the judge assigned to my case has authored without sifting through everything she’s written. And I wanted the rules for all jurisdictions at my fingertips. That’s why we built a proprietary tagging structure to let you sort case law by issue, jurisdiction, judge, date and keyword. Hours of work is reduced to minutes. ROI is made with one search.”

Kelly also indicated that they are “working with eDiscovery professionals from around the country to create a community of users who want to stop reinventing the wheel and learn as technology and the law develop.”

From a pricing standpoint, Kelly indicated that pricing is available on a per seat, multiple seat or custom site basis.  You can sign up directly for per seat monthly and annual subscriptions on ediscoveryassistant.com. The annual subscription includes two free months.  For firms or organizations seeking more than five seats, you can contact them to set up multiple seats on one account.

eDiscovery Assistant also offers the ability for a firm or organization to have a separate branded site. Custom sites can also include a separate administrative backend to upload proprietary checklists and templates for sharing within the firm only.  Contact them at 720.414.6106 or at support@ediscoveryassistant.com to inquire about pricing for custom options.

I want to thank everybody at the Women in eDiscovery (WiE) Houston Chapter for inviting me to speak at the Legal Technology Showcase & Conference yesterday.  It was a terrific and very well attended conference!  I also want to thank my fellow panelists in the “State of the Industry” panel: Lana Schell from ONE Discovery (who moderated), Michele Lange of KrolLDiscovery, Lynn Frances Jae of iCONECT and Richard Dilgren of Fronteo.  We led off with the first panel of the day and discussed a variety of topics including Technology Assisted Review, the growth of cloud automation technology within eDiscovery, the impact of cybersecurity on eDiscovery and the impact of the 2015 Federal rules changes.  It was an enjoyable and informative discussion!

So, what do you think?  Do you have a go to resource for eDiscovery case law and best practices?  Besides eDiscovery Daily, of course!  :o)  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.