eDiscovery Due Diligence Approach

Requirements, Requirements, Requirements

Define your legal hold requirements, not at a high level, but at very specific level. Create a few scenarios. For example, the chain of custody of a copy of information vs. “frozen” information in context will present itself very differently in court. These requirements, like records management requirements, filter down to all information in the organization. It is worth the effort to understand the intricacies of each existing system and their integrations.

As-Is Systems

Determine what information is needed for the Legal Hold tool to function correctly, for example, assuming identity management is important to discovery then is IDM/AD in good shape? If it isn’t, when will it be? Does the Information Security group have enough resources to deal with this new software?

Inventory the existing information repository vendors to determine if they have eDiscovery add-ons which might be adapted to or used out right. For example, Open Text has an eDiscovery module tailored to its Livelink software.

Integrations

Interaction of the proposed software solution with existing systems is very important. For example, how well does EMC’s solution adapted to Open Text repositories? A few more: Email holds? File system shares? Identity Management?

Tradeshows and Research Analysts Analysis

At tradeshows the players with the deepest pockets are going to wow the audience with all of the bells and whistles. “Yeah, we can do that”, but it’s a customization… Even the demos are usually canned and not real. The reality is that it’s up to your specific requirements. Gartner’s quadrant could be based on a pure play model not an integrated one. I agree with Gartner that solutions are still in their awkward stage, which is more the reason to develop specific requirements.

Search vs. eDiscovery focused

Autonomy is an excellent search tool, however, is it going to integrate well with our other systems specifically around the access control aspects? This could dovetail nicely into an Enterprise Search tool effort…

Security Group Participation

The Information Security group must be an integral part of this whole approach. Without their participation and buy-in from the start, it will be an uphill battle. They will obviously work in tandem with Legal to perform eDiscovery activities. They need to be comfortable with driving their cruiser.

Professional Services after the purchase

I’m not sure of the overall percentage of services vs. software in Legal Hold software, but I’d say it is substantial. Weighing the specific requirements against the software’s out-of-the-box offerings will be worth the effort.