e-discovery 2.0

E-discovery does not get much mainstream media coverage. Maybe once a year, either Fortune or the Wall Street Journal writes about it. The vendors included in the story get excited, but no one else notices.

So John Markoff’s story on March 4 in The New York Times about “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software” was remarkable on several fronts. First off, The New York Times is country’s leading newspaper, with a far larger readership than any publication which has written about e-discovery before. Second, the New York Times placed the story above the fold on its home page, ensuring all readers saw it. Third, and perhaps most important, readers responded and the story went viral, becoming the paper’s “most emailed” story for the next two days. It zoomed around the Twitter-sphere, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and prompted a flurry of thoughtful responses, most notably from Ralph Losey, Chris Dale, Posse List, and Jerome Kowalski.

Over the past 10 days or so, I’ve spoken to several corporations and law firms who are learning about e-discovery technology for the first time from this article. It’s been striking to feel their curiosity, excitement, and complete lack of concern about [allegedly] being automated out of a job. Corporate legal departments see the opportunity to get control over the process by using technology to bring e-discovery in-house; and law firms see it as a critical part of their role as trusted advisors to help their clients make well-informed decisions about e-discovery. Neither has any fear about leveraging e-discovery software where they can, because they know e-discovery is not as simple as self-checkout at the grocery store. As many commentators have pointed out, along with great technology, you still need smart people to operate that technology and make important judgment decisions.

In my view, what’s more important than the specific content of the story is the fact that the story was written, published, and read by so many people, who reacted to it in a profound way – by wanting to learn more.

As the industry grows, and the impact of e-discovery software is more widely recognized, there will no doubt be more many more articles about it in the mainstream media. But this was the first one to capture the popular imagination and – in the minds of many – put e-discovery on the map.