Tag Archives: LegalTech

April 23, 2024 · 10:04 AM

Index-In-Place eDiscovery Tech is in High Demand, but Beware of False Vendor Claims

By John Patzakis

Proportionality-based eDiscovery is a goal that all in-house corporate legal teams want to attain. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), parties may discover any non-privileged material that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. However, most core eDiscovery costs (outside of attorney review) stem from over-collection of electronically stored information (ESI), and over-collection thwarts the ability to attain proportionality. Law firm Nelson Mullins notes that “over preservation tends to have its own costs relating to storage of large amounts of electronically stored information (ESI) and the resources needed to manage it; leads to increased downstream e-discovery costs associated with collection, processing, and review.”

This is why accurate pre-collection data insight is a game-changing capability that enables counsel to set reasonable discovery limits and ultimately process, host, review and produce much less ESI. Counsel can further use pre-collection proportionality analysis to gather key information, develop a litigation budget, and better manage litigation deadlines. Such insights can also foster cooperation by informing the parties early in the process about where relevant ESI is located, and what keywords and other search parameters can identify and pinpoint relevant ESI.

And the means to enable this capability is distributed index and search in-place technology. Indexing and search in-place in this context means that a software-based indexing technology is deployed directly onto fileservers, laptops, or in the cloud to address cloud-based data sources. This indexing occurs without a bulk transfer of the data to a central location. Once indexed, the searches are performed in a few seconds, with complex Boolean operators, metadata filters and regular expression searches. The searches can be iterated and repeated without limitation, which is critical for large data sets.

However, with this capability being highly valued, many vendors have parroted this messaging, but have offerings that do not qualify as true index-in-place. True distributed index-in-place means that the search indexes are forward-deployed, and are actually installed on the target laptop, Mac computer, fileserver or into the cloud near where the target cloud data sources exist. Transferring data in bulk to a central appliance or server farm via a collector agent or Robocopy function does not qualify. A true index-in-place capability uniquely enables scalability, targeted collection and also minimizes security and data governance risks in eDiscovery and information governance matters.

Conversely, a process requiring massive data copying, migration and centralization does not scale and creates significant data, governance and privacy issues by needlessly duplicating data. For instance, if a matter requires that 10 terabytes be scanned to determine if relevant ESI exists within that data corpus, and the eDiscovery collection platform being used has no index-in-place capability, then all 10 terabytes must be copied and transferred to the tool for indexing and analysis. These limitations stem from tool vendors simply utilizing open source indexing platforms like Lucene or Elastic Search that are not forward-deployable and must reside in centralized locations with a very large amount of computing resources to make them viable for the type of data and data volumes typically seen in discovery and information governance matters.

This is why X1 leverages proprietary and patented index and search technology that is readily forward deployable and thus can scale and allow true distributed indexing in-place. X1 Enterprise Collect significantly streamlines the eDiscovery workflow with integrated culling and deduplication, thereby eliminating the need for expensive and cumbersome ESI processing tools. That way, the ESI can be populated straight into Relativity from an X1 collection without multiple hand offs, extensive project management and inefficient data processing.

The ability to directly and transparently collect data from custodian laptops, desktops, Microsoft 365 and other cloud sources into a RelativityOne/Relativity workspace is a game-changer that enables attorneys to begin review in hours rather than weeks.

For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, law firm, Preservation & Collection, proportionality

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March 13, 2024 · 2:06 PM

Microsoft 365 Modern Attachments Pose Significant eDiscovery Challenges and Risk

By John Patzakis

In their excellent publication, 2023 eDiscovery Case Law in Review, Winston and Strawn, LLP, one of the top law firms in the US, highlights the challenges legal and eDiscovery professionals face with modern attachments. Modern attachments, also known as hyperlinks, are URL pointers that link to files or emails stored in another location. They are commonly found in Microsoft 365 Mail and Teams.

Winston and Strawn reports that “[r]equesting parties are increasingly sophisticated about this issue given the proliferation of Microsoft 365…and thus we have noted an uptick in requesting parties demanding that linked attachments be produced along with transmittal emails—in essence demanding that traditional email families be assembled from these pieces.” In re StubHub Refund Litig., 2023 WL 3092972 (N.D. Cal. April 25, 2023) is a case cited by the authors as a recent decision requiring the production of modern attachments in discovery.

The one area I disagree with in the report is its view that without investing in expensive services and Microsoft Premium licensing it may be very challenging and burdensome to identify and collect modern attachments. If you rely on Microsoft Purview for eDiscovery compliance and information governance, you must upgrade to expensive premium licensing that can add up to tens of millions of dollars in additional expense for larger enterprises. And even then, there are significant throughput and defensibility challenges.

eDiscovery service providers have stepped into the mix to provide manual services to address MS 365 challenges. But throwing services at the problem is disruptive, inefficient, and expensive as well.

X1 provides a different approach. X1 Enterprise Collect provides full support for modern attachments in MS Mail and in Teams. X1 is the only solution we and our partners are aware of that supports the search and collection of modern attachments in MS 365 without the need for a Premium (E5) license or additional manual services. This is because X1 Enterprise Collect does not operate by simply making bulk calls to the MS Graph API, like most eDiscovery tools, which also require a premium license to collect the key data such as modern attachments. X1 employs a targeted, custodian-based approach that minimizes 365 API calls, and does not rely on the MS Search Index, which has been demonstrated to be untrustworthy and with limited throughput. X1’s approach enables a very scalable, defensible, and robust data collection at speeds 10x that of other approaches.

The X1 Enterprise Collect Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud and on-premise. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Case Law, Cloud Data, Corporations, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, law firm, MS Teams, OneDrive

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February 27, 2024 · 11:38 AM

Modern, Targeted ESI Collection Can Cut eDiscovery Costs by Over 90 Percent

By John Patzakis and Chas Meier

eDiscovery can be an expensive and time-consuming process when traditional data collection methods are employed. With legacy processes, it can take weeks for electronically stored information (ESI) collections to finally end up in review. Time is money, and utilizing dated processes can dramatically increase costs as well as risk. One of the biggest drivers of excessive eDiscovery costs is over-collection of irrelevant or unnecessary information. This in turn leads to a larger amount of data entering the processing and initial review funnel.

In fact, old school manual collection efforts require employing multiple tools, data copies, and manual steps into your litigation workflow. The majority of ESI processing consists of data culling and filtering, deduplication, text extraction, metadata preservation, and then staging the data for upload into a review platform, often in the form of a load (DAT) file. Some ESI processing solutions require deployment of non-integrated on-premise hardware appliances that further increase costs and add time delays. Manual collections, multiple generations of data duplication, and disjointed handoffs exponentially increase costs and risk while significantly delaying documents being available for review.

If you are still using stand-alone processing tools, you are doing it wrong and subjecting your clients to extensive costs and time delays. Modern collection technologies combine targeted collection with in-place processing of data which is automatically collected, processed, and uploaded into a review platform such as Relativity in one fell swoop.

The graph below established that the cost for collection, processing and first month hosting under a traditional preservation process can be upwards of $12,000 per custodian:

Properly targeted preservation initiatives are favored by the courts for purposes of civil eDiscovery and enabled by next generation software to search data sources quickly and effectively in-place throughout the enterprise. The value of targeted and proportional preservation is recognized in the Committee Notes to the recent FRCP amendments, which urge the parties to reach agreement on the preservation of data, keywords, and other metadata to identify responsive materials. See also, In re Genetically Modified Rice Litigation, (“Preservation efforts can become unduly burdensome and unreasonably costly unless those efforts are targeted to those documents reasonably likely to be relevant or lead to the discovery of relevant evidence.”)

X1 Enterprise Collect significantly streamlines the eDiscovery workflow with integrated culling and deduplication, thereby eliminating the need for expensive and cumbersome ESI processing tools. That way, the ESI can be populated straight into Relativity from an X1 collection without multiple hand offs, extensive project management and inefficient data processing.

The ability to directly and transparently collect data from custodian laptops, desktops, Microsoft 365 and other cloud sources into a RelativityOne / Relativity workspace is a game-changer that enables Attorney’s to begin review in hours rather than weeks.

The second chart shows how this streamlined approach, based upon a detailed ROI analysis, reduces eDiscovery costs by over 90 percent:

So, in terms of the big picture, X1 Enterprise Collect provides a complete platform to implement a properly targeted preservation strategy in the enterprise enabling organizations to save a lot of time, save a lot of money, and be able to make faster and better decisions.

When you accelerate the speed to review and eliminate over-collection and inefficient processing, you gain much better early insight into your data and can increase efficiencies on many levels.

Finally, the calculations represented in the charts were generated from a customizable ROI cost calculator created by Chas Meier, based upon his more than 20 years’ experience in eDiscovery service provider roles. If you would like a copy of this ROI calculator, please contact Chas at CMeier@x1.com.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Management, Preservation & Collection

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July 12, 2023 · 11:47 AM

eDiscovery Journal Highlights X1’s Game Changing Support of MS 365

By John Patzakis

Greg Buckles of the eDJ, arguably the top independent eDiscovery industry analyst, penned an important article outlining X1’s support for MS 365 data sources within the X1 Enterprise Collect platform and how it even surpasses in many respects Microsoft’s own Premium Purview services. In his post, Buckles first listed X1’s “top level take-aways” as follows:

• X1’s Teams support targets individual custodians and specific messaging threads, displacing any need to mass download Teams chats and channels.
o X1 collects and searches Teams content directly without relying on the Microsoft Graph content search API, which has known gaps.
• X1 indexes, searches and processes Teams data in-place, removing any reliance on premium processing or supplemental services.
o Modern attachments are collected and searched in place and automated data formatting enables one-click upload into Relativity for review.
• Unified search and collection of on-premise and cloud data sources, including Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Mail, laptops and file-shares for an optimized workflow
o Provides True ECA and processing capabilities at the point of collection. Assess, process, and collect only what is needed, narrowing funnel at point of collection.

Buckles then notes that “archiving and enterprise search products like Autonomy IDOL struggled to deliver a ‘universal index’ for decades.” Similarly, Microsoft 365 “can struggle to meet the stringent eDiscovery/compliance requirements.” Specifically, Buckles noted that Microsoft Purview faces significant throughput limitations as documented by his own performance testing: “Past Purview advanced indexing performance testing for eDJ corporate clients resulted in limiting SLA’s to 1-3 full custodians per day.” Conversely, Buckles writes that “X1’s distributed index approach allows them to expand a user’s M365 sources to include desktops, file shares and 3rd party content such as Dropbox. It offloads much of the processing overhead to endpoint devices and avoids some of Purview Premium’s throughput limits for larger custodial matters.” As noted in the article, X1’s benchmark testing of 25 mailboxes in 4-8 hours and we have seen that scale in parallel.

Many customers report to us that Microsoft Purview Premium’s documented inability to timely handle anything other than small matters due to their 2GB per hour throughput limit (which X1 is not subject to due to our direct connection approach) is disqualifying for them. eDiscovery and investigation matters need to be addressed expediently. X1 can address a matter involving 100 custodians at 10GB of MS 365 data each within 24 hours (search, collection and export), while Microsoft Purview Premium, per Buckles’ performance testing and Microsoft’s own documentation, would take up to several weeks.

Additionally, Buckles’ generally referenced, including linking to Microsofts’ documentation, identifying other Purview Premium limitations such as not searching files and attachments over 150 MB, not addressing hidden mail folders, and not accessing files and emails without “compliance copies.” X1 is not subject to these limitations.

The X1 Enterprise Collect Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premise, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Collect Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/x1-enterprise-collect-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, MS Teams, OneDrive, Preservation & Collection, SharePoint

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August 17, 2022 · 10:38 AM

Important SaaS Architecture Considerations for Legal Tech Software

by Kunjan Zaveri

With nearly all eDiscovery software now being offered on a SaaS basis, the cloud architecture decisions supporting the vendor’s platform are pivotal. Decisions on architecture design can lead to either very successful or very poor outcomes. The right architecture depends on the company’s SaaS delivery strategy, their customer profile and size, and the volume and nature of their anticipated transactions. These considerations are especially important in the legal tech space, which has some unique requirements and market dynamics such as heighted security and customization for large clients, and channel support (requiring platform portability), which are generally not as relevant to general SaaS architecture considerations.

At a high level, it is important to understand the two main SaaS architectures: multi-tenancy and single-tenancy. In cloud computing, tenancy refers to the allocation of computing resources in a cloud environment. In SaaS, tenancy is categorized into two formats: single-tenant SaaS and multi-tenant SaaS. In the single-tenant SaaS environment, each client has a dedicated infrastructure. Single-tenant products can’t be shared between clients and the buyer can customize the software according to their requirements. Multi-tenancy is an architecture where a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. In a multi-tenant SaaS environment, many organizations share the same software and usually the same database (or at least a portion of a common database) to save and store data.

Single-tenancy and multi-tenancy SaaS each have their advantages and disadvantages, and the selection of either approach by a legal tech SaaS vendor should depend on their overall product and go-to-market strategy. Here are some of the advantages of a single-tenancy architecture:

1. Improved Security

With single-tenancy, each customer’s data is completely isolated from other customers with fewer and more trusted points of entry. The result is better overall security from outside threats and the prevention of one customer accessing another’s sensitive information, either intentionally or inadvertently.

2. Reliable Operations and Individual Tenant Scalability

Single-tenant SaaS architectures are considered more reliable as there is not a single point of failure that can affect all customers. For example, if one client uploads a massive amount of corrupt data that taxes resources and crashes the system, it won’t affect another clients’ instances. Single-tenancy is actually more scalable within an individual client instance, while multi-tenancy can better scale the addition and management of many customers.

3. Customization

Many large customers need specific features or unique security measures that require custom development, which can be very difficult in a multi-tenancy environment. Companies that use single-tenancy architecture can upgrade their services individually. Rather than waiting for the software provider to launch a universal update, users can update their accounts as soon as the download is available or decline patches that are not needed by a specific customer.  

4. Portability

With single-tenancy, a vendor can host their platform in their own SaaS environment, a channel partner’s environment, or enable their customers to install the solution behind their firewall or in their private cloud. Multi-tenancy SaaS does not allow for this flexibility.

Multi-tenant SaaS Advantages

Multi-tenancy is commonly utilized as most SaaS offerings are consumer or otherwise high-volume commoditized offerings, which necessitates such an architecture. Here are some of the key advantages of multi-tenant SaaS architecture over single-tenant:

1. Lower Costs

Since computing services are all shared under a multi-tenant architecture, it can cost less than a single-tenant structure. Scaling across the customer base is easier as new users utilize the same uniform software and resources as all the other customers.

2. Efficient Resources Spread Across all Customers

Because all resources are shared and uniform, multi-tenant architecture uses resources that, once engineered, offer optimum efficiency. Since it’s a changing environment where resources are accessed simultaneously, multi-tenant SaaS software needs to be engineered to have the capacity for powering multiple customers at once.

3. Fewer Maintenance Costs

Maintenance costs are usually associated with a SaaS subscription and aren’t passed through to the customer or incurred by the channel partner like with a single-tenant structure.

4. Shared Data Centers

Unlike a single-tenant environment, a vendor doesn’t have to create a new instance within the datacenter for every new user. Customers have to use a common infrastructure that removes the need to continually add partitioned instances for each new tenant.

So which architecture is the right one for a legal tech SaaS vendor? It completely depends on the company’s strategy, pricing, and nature of the offering. To illustrate this point, consider the examples of two hypothetical legal tech SaaS vendors: Acme and Widget.

Acme provides do it yourself data processing on a high-volume, low-cost basis, handling about 700 matters a week at an average project value of $400. Acme’s customer base is primarily small to medium size law firms and service providers who have multiple projects on different cases over the course of a year. Acme’s clients do not want to fuss with hardware or any software maintenance requirements.

Widget offers an enterprise-grade compliance and security data analytics platform, sold at an average sale price (ASP) of $400,000, but as high as $2 million for a dedicated annual license. Widget has 32 active enterprise customers and hopes to grow to 70 customers in three years with an even higher ASP. About a third of Widget’s clients prefer that Widget host the solution in Widget’s cloud instance. Another group of clients are large financial institutions that, for security and governance purposes, insist on self-hosting the platform in their own private cloud. The rest are instances sold through channel partners who prefer to host the platform themselves and provide value added services. Many Widget customers have particularized compliance requirements and other unique circumstances that require customization to support their needs.

For Acme, the correct choice is multi-tenancy. Acme offers a commoditized SaaS service, and it needs a high volume of individual customers to drive more transactional revenue growth. A single-tenancy architecture would prevent the company from scaling, would be too expensive, and unmanageable. However, some legal tech companies who have opted for this architectural approach have made the mistake of pursuing a more low-market commoditized strategy without making the initial considerable investment in engineering expertise and resources to build such an architecture.

In contrast, single-tenancy is the optimal architecture choice for Widget. While single-tenancy cloud is slightly more challenging to support, Widgets’ premium enterprise offering requires portability for the channel and rigorous security minded clients as well as customization, and thus is a clear fit for single-tenancy. In the future, Widget may have closer to a thousand customers or be acquired by a much larger company that will want to deploy the solution to their extensive client base. It would be a good idea for Widget to architect their single-tenancy platform in a manner, such as employing microservices, that will allow it to readily port it to a multi-tenancy environment when warranted.

So, for legal tech executives, the question to ask is whether your strategy and product offering is more in line with Widget or Acme. But the bottom line is to make sure your strategy drives your choice of architecture and not the other way around.

Kunjan Zaveri is the Chief Technology Officer of X1. (www.x1.com)

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