The rapid rise of ediscovery vendors

ediscovery toolsPost the 2006 amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil procedure, the market for ediscovery tools and services has grown exponentially. These rules are the rules by which civil litigation is conducted within the US; however most of these rules are mirrored in other international legal jurisdictions. Prior to these amendments, the vendor marketplace for ediscovery solutions was extremely specialized and catered for particular niches within the market. More often than not, ediscovery tools were purchased directly by large legal firms or organizations that were involved in many numbers of legal cases. The reason for purchase at this stage was mainly due to convenience and risk reduction, rather than cost-effectiveness. Prior to the automation of the processes, there was a tendency to provide the countless boxes of paper to a local service provider, who would usually simply just scan in the documents into some form of electronic format. No real form of indexing or other categorisation was performed, and this did not bode well for the timeframes of the discovery processes. However, post the amendments, a number of technology vendors entered the fray, and the marketplace for ediscovery tools was transformed, with new entrants seemingly entering every year. Competition for clients was heated, and subsequently resulted in some consolidation within the environment, with a number of the smaller players merging with larger technology firms. The result of this was that numerous integration efforts were needed to ensure that the technology and applications used were standardized across the client base.