Madison Chooses StoredIQ to Manage eDiscovery In-House

Madison Capital Management, LLC (“Madison”), an alternative investment management firm with offices in the US and Europe has deployed StoredIQ’s Intelligent Information Management Platform to gain actionable intelligence from its rapidly expanding electronic data – allowing legal and IT teams to work in tandem to enhance eDiscovery strategies, meet compliance mandates and reduce risk and cost.

We wanted to better understand what data we have, where it resides and determine how we can better manage our information across the enterprise and do so in a proactive manner. With StoredIQ we are able to make intelligent decisions about the state of our data based on corporate policies and legal discovery requirements. – Tony Balding, vice president, software solutions at Madison

From a GC’s perspective, we needed a solution that allowed me to work closely with the IT department, analyze the data to determine the merits of a dispute quickly, understand related review cost and provide a defensible audit trail. StoredIQ exceeded that expectation with their unique capabilities, such as analyzing data where it natively resides, the user-friendly legal and IT workflow, and the scoreboard that keeps track of review costs as data is identified, preserved and collected. – Judy Michael, assistant vice president, legal, asset and risk management at Madison

Market-leading companies use StoredIQ to respond rapidly and efficiently to legal matters, litigation, and investigations. Utilizing StoredIQ, corporate legal teams can locate, analyze and act upon unstructured electronically stored information much more comprehensively and efficiently. As a result, companies can better manage their legal risk and reduce expenses, while formulating superior legal strategies. With StoredIQ, companies:

• Quickly locate matter-relevant electronic documents with advanced search technology
• Analyze electronic documents in-place with detailed data topology maps, advanced analytics, and precise data explorers
• Preserve and collect data to a secure legal hold repository, preserving all metadata and business context
• Perform first-pass reviews on documents before exporting data downstream
• Act on and manage potentially relevant data in a legally defensible manner with audit trails and a robust chain of custody

StoredIQ’s award-winning solution streamlines eDiscovery processes for legal and IT, allows for early case analysis “in the Wild,” and provides complete cost predictability.

Making the Case for “Earliest Case Analysis”

Analyze Anywhere Moves ECA Into 'The Wild'

In a recent eDiscovery Journal article, Barry Murphy wrote about the trend of Early Case Assessment (ECA) moving even earlier in the eDiscovery process to be more in line with the identification and collection phase of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). Murphy explains how, by adopting an integrated ECA solution, organizations can simplify the eDiscovery process, and are able to achieve the following results:

• Quickly begin analyzing content without having to move or copy data
• Eliminate over-collection by enabling precise data culling prior to preservation
• Review file contents with keywords and entities of interest highlighted
• Use tagging to mark files of interest or group objects together relating to a common task

We agree with Barry’s assessment, as we see the same trend amongst our customers.  In fact we’ve been talking about this trend ourselves for a while now.  Our Early Case Analysis solution indexes unstructured electronic data and makes it available for searching and analysis without affecting metadata or content, prior to any movement or collection of data.  This ability to do early case analysis on data “in the wild” gives legal counsel the ability to assess the merits of a dispute, formulate a legal strategy, and make decisions concerning the matter significantly faster than traditional ECA.

What about you? If you’ve seen the same trend, tell us about it. If you’ve experienced something different, we’d like to hear about that too. For more information visit Early Case Analysis with StoredIQ’s Analyze Anywhere.

Real World eDiscovery – Not Seen On TV

I’m not a lawyer. But I often wonder if lawyers watch TV legal dramas like Law & Order (the original or any of the many spin-offs we now have to choose from) and think to themselves, “Really, if it were only that simple.” Or maybe it’s more like, “Jack McCoy (played by Sam Waterson) you wouldn’t last a day prosecuting a real legal matter.” They make it look so easy. You find the evidence. You arrest the bad guy. You convict the bad guy. Case closed. What’s so hard about that? In the real word, a lot actually.

Working for an information management company I might be a bit jaded toward the lack of visibility TV dramas provide into the discovery process. However I do know it’s unlikely you’re going to find key evidence or a “smoking gun” wadded up in a trash can in the bad guy’s office – though it seems to happen a lot on TV. No, more than likely you are going to have to wade through terabytes or even petabyes of electronic data from multiple custodians spread across email, file shares, laptops, document management systems, etc.  Your first thoughts are probably, “How long is this going to take and how much is it going to cost?”

Organizations must expect the unexpected and be prepared to deal with several concurrent matters with varying electronic discovery requirements. In a recent whitepaper from Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, he discusses the often unpredictable and challenging eDiscovery process – and the opportunities that in-house eDiscovery solutions provide for real world improvement including:

• Incorporate All Data – ensure that your eDiscovery solution is comprehensive and goes beyond email to include other corporate ESI sources – locating the data you need to make informed case strategy decisions and minimizing your risk for non-disclosure sanctions.

• Timeliness Matter – other than meeting tight deadlines, organizations can benefit from speeding up the eDiscovery process by meeting the duty to preserve early, more accurately predicting case budgets, preparing for initial case assessments, and reducing reliance on outsourced review resources when pressed for time.

• Resource Scalability – utilizing a holistic eDiscovery solution, corporations can ensure that all departments and users involved in the legal discovery process are not overburdened by disparate tools and technologies, and that productivity isn’t impacted as the amount of corporate information and number of matters continues to grow.

As Mr. Babineau states in the paper, “Electronic discovery, when supported by the right technology has the potential to deliver benefits greater than a simple reduction of legal service provider costs. Corporate counsel can near-instantaneously analyze data to see what should be collected and preserved, enabling them to make strategic decisions sooner in the legal process, and swiftly adapt as new information is discovered.”

Perhaps as more organizations adopt in-house eDiscovery solutions, the legal discovery process will become more intelligent, less cumbersome, and less costly. And who knows, one day it may start to resemble the legal dramas we watch on TV. 

For more in-depth information, download the complete whitepaper from Enterprise Strategy Group.