Press Release

CLEARWELL PLAYS LEADING ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT
OF EDRM PROJECT XML STANDARD

Support of E-Discovery Industry Working Group Results in Increased Efficiencies for Enterprise and Law Firm Customers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—October 24, 2007—Clearwell Systems, Inc., a leader in Intelligent E-Discovery, today announced its involvement in and adoption of the newly released Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard from the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project. The XML standard improves interoperability and the transfer of electronically stored information (ESI) to and from applications involved in different phases of the discovery process, and was established to reduce the costs, manual work and risks faced by all e-discovery practitioners. 

Clearwell’s director of product management, Kurt Leafstrand, served as the project lead for the XSD Completion Working Group, which was fully responsible for defining and finalizing all portions of the XML Schema.  “Clearwell was an integral member of the XML Project, an EDRM working group, and played a leadership role in the definition and approval of the XML Schema,” said George Socha, co-founder of EDRM and president of Socha Consulting LLC.  “Clearwell’s work with archiving vendors, forensics vendors and e-discovery service providers clearly demonstrates its commitment to streamlining the process across multiple solutions – an important step in helping customers achieve greater efficiencies for e-discovery.”

“As proven by our efforts with Clearwell’s E-Discovery Partner Program, Clearwell is very focused on streamlining the interoperability between E-Discovery Technology Partners,” Leafstrand said. “Further, it was important for Clearwell to take an active role in the creation of the XML standard, so that our customers could easily streamline processes across multiple technology systems and maximize the overall benefits provided by the Clearwell Intelligence Platform. Net net, the XML standard delivers significant value for any organization faced with e-discovery, and further ensures reduction in labor, errors, time and money during an e-discovery event.”

The new standard was developed by a dedicated working group of leading technologists from software companies, law firms, e-discovery service providers and enterprise end-users, and includes an XML Schema Definition (XSD) that will allow all parties to consistently describe documents, email, attachments and standalone files, as well as the underlying metadata for all of those objects as they move through the e-discovery process.  Specifically, the XML standard provides the following benefits throughout the entire e-discovery process:

• Labor and cost reduction: IT departments, legal teams and service providers no longer have to spend valuable time and resources converting and transferring ESI from system to system
• Reduction in errors: Not only can organizations focus on proficiency in a single standard schema as opposed to an infinite number of disparate formats, but the validation tool detects non-conforming load files earlier in the process
• Faster e-discovery process: Data can be transferred from system to system more quickly, ultimately leading to a faster overall process
• Scalability: The ability to adapt to future technological advances as well as new metadata constructs

About Clearwell Systems

Clearwell Systems, the leader in Intelligent E-Discovery, is transforming the way enterprises conduct electronic discovery in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries, and corporate investigations. By automating the analysis and review of electronically stored information, Clearwell enables enterprises to reduce the cost, duration, and complexity of e-discovery. Leading corporations, government agencies, and legal service providers have reduced e-discovery costs by as much as 80 percent within days of their deployments. For more information, visit www.clearwellsystems.com, or learn about E-Discovery 2.0 at clearwellsystems.blogspot.com.

About EDRM
The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was launched in 2005 to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market. The completed reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic discovery products and services. Information about EDRM is available at http://www.edrm.net.