LDM Global launches processing and hosting managed services

LDM Global is offering legal discovery processing, hosting and support services in fixed-price blocks payable by monthly, quarterly or annual subscriptions. The press release is here.

The scheme allows access to LDM Global’s processing, storage, and backup, together with project management and technical support, available by web access to all cases from anywhere in the world. Having decided on the size of volume blocks and a payment period, the client can think in terms of overall case volumes rather than project by project costs.

Once a new case has been set up with licenses and permissions, any tasks thereafter can be done either by the client’s own team or by LDM Global’s support team. Different levels of support are available depending on the service level chosen, making this attractive both for skilled users and for those without their own resources.

LDM Global partners with Equivio, Relativity, AccessData and LexisNexis among others. The appropriate applications will be used at each stage to achieve the right result for the client.

This looks a good approach for firms and companies who can anticipate a certain level of demand without necessarily being able to predict how much will be required by any one case at any time. The context is the obvious concern about costs, where certainty is as important as the actual outlay. The level of predictability offered by such a service should enable law firms, in turn, to be more accurate in their cost predictions both to their clients and to opponents and the court in the new world of court-led costs management.

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Two predictive coding case studies emphasise time and cost savings

I referred a while back to two case studies about the use of the technology known variously as “predictive coding”, “computer-assisted coding” or, more recently, “technology assisted review” or TAR. One of them involved Epiq Systems and the other Millnet. One was a US example involving Baker & McKenzie and the other one came from Eversheds in the UK. I group them together because all four of these names, of service providers and law firms, are familiar ones in the UK. Most of the (by now extensive) literature on the subject of predictive coding involves organisation names which allow non-US lawyers to dismiss the subject as being of no relevance to them. The familiarity of the players in these two case studies may help to dispel this notion, even if one of the cases involves US regulatory proceedings.

The Baker & McKenzie / Epiq IQ Review / Equivio example

I start with an interview in Metropolitan Corporate Counsel with David Laing, a partner in the Washington, DC office of Baker & McKenzie LLP and called Predictive Coding = Great eDiscovery Cost and Time Savings.  The application used was Epiq Systems’ IQ Review which is a combination of Equivio’s Relevance software and Epiq’s own applications, pulled together by Epic’s consultancy services.

David Laing first describes how this technology works. He says:

It uses a limited number of senior attorneys familiar with a matter to review a representative statistical sample of the documents. The predictive coding software then applies the results of that statistical sample to the entire database. Predictive coding provides a way to prioritize documents for review.

His context is very large cases involving both high volumes and tight deadlines as well as an opponent, the Department of Justice, with the motive, the power and the means to be extremely fussy about what they are sent. The DOJ was, Laing says, “completely satisfied with the response and raised no questions about it”.

Who explains eDisclosure sources to the lawyers and the court?

An article by US lawyer and eDiscovery expert Jon Resnick of Applied Discovery has application in UK proceedings as well as in the US. Who on your side actually understands where the client’s data is and what is involved in collecting it?

I got an e-mail last night from Geoffrey Lambert in Melbourne whose opening line read simply “Stakhanovite!”. That, as many of you will know, is shorthand for “You have produced a lot today” and implicitly compared my published output (in fact the accumulation of several days’ dictation) with the work of Alexey Stakhanov who, on 19 September 1935, was reported as having mined 227 tonnes of coal in a single shift at the Ukraine city the which is now named after him. His accolades for this feat included the Order of Lenin and having his photograph on the cover of Time Magazine. Some said that the output may not have been entirely down to Stakhanov alone, but the feat was taken up by the USSR marketing machine as evidence of its citizens’ commitment to productivity.

I knew of Stakhanov, but looked him up anyway and then turned to the next item on my to-do list, a commentary on an article by Jon Resnick, Worldwide Vice President Field Operations and Marketing for Applied Discovery. Jon too is a man of prodigious output, with regular articles both on Applied Discovery’s blog and on the company’s Weekly Snapshot which, as I said in a recent article, is one of the more useful and comprehensive sources of regular eDiscovery information. An article by him also appeared on the Forbes web site recently. I have no idea if, as was said of Stakhanov, Jon has a team of willing helpers to do the research and proof-reading which is the writer’s equivalent of opening the seams and carrying away the coal – if so, perhaps he could lend me one, since the volume of material to write about at the moment far exceeds the time available to do it, and I don’t have a large marketing operation to run in addition, as Jon does. All in all, Jon Resnick (in the top photograph below) deserves the comparison with Alexey Stakhanov (the lower photograph) more than I do.