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E-Discovery Services Jacksonville

What is e-Discovery?

Some decades back all businesses used to store data and information in paper documents. But with breakthroughs in Information Technology over the few decades, firms have changed making the use of computers as a major device in the storage and management of information. A big deal of these electronic data has legally sensitive information that may be made use of as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. Due to this reason, the process known as e-Discovery has become a major process in getting evidences to be used in lawsuits. Electronic discovery or also known as E-discovery is a process where e-data in the form of text, images, databases, spreadsheets, audio files, etc. are made use of as evidence in civil or criminal legal litigations.

Compared to paper, e-data is easy to store, share, manage and even search. These are the traits that have made the e-data very suitable for carrying out investigation. The e-data has metadata (data about data) which is a feature that’s not found in paper documents.

An increment to business firm’s activity on daily basis also results to an increase in their ESI (Electronically Stored Information) the need for the data to be managed also increases. With the tightening of regulations that have to be considered and the going up of litigations firms and other organizations have been made to confront, more of them have increased their awareness of the legal risks that’s involved in managing of ESI. As a result of this, they have invested in information risk management systems and document retention policies. An E-discovery service in Jacksonville is an expensive process. Millions of dollars have been spend in e-discovery since the 2006 amendment to the federal procedures for e-discovery; firms have taken this service very seriously. One company spend over 12Million Dollars reviewing documents in e-Discovery, only to discover that those documents should have been gotten rid of a long time ago, this is according to existing document retention policies. Another two firms were fined 29.2Million Dollars and 253 Million Dollars respectively in litigation that required e-Discovery of files. Another big Insurance company was fined 1 Million Dollars for not preserving certain records that proved to be crucial by the courts of law.

A big percentage of the documents created in offices of companies and organizations are stored in hard drives and scattered shared drives. Combination of this with the ongoing problem of user adoption of new tools, make them get exposed to information risks. Failure by employees to comply with document retention policy and the presence of high-risk documents on their computers has become a very risky combination for business. On the other hand the inability of clients in meeting contractual duties can result into the creation of obvious liabilities for business. Most firms and organizations have been required by the governmental organizations to have a possession of written document retention handy and have them effectively executed. Lastly, the business leaders must have the management of all legal related issues to business productivity.

The combination of Cloud and E-discovery services in Jacksonville

E-discovery services Jacksonville is currently involving use of Cloud Computing the most promising new technologies in storing information. It has the capability of storing essential information on the net with no need for a physical storage device. Integration of E-discovery and cloud computing has become easier to use and handle. Drawbacks do exist, however, some experts is this field are seeing potential shortcomings in the use of the cloud in combined with e-discovery. This has brought endless discussions whether e-discovery and the cloud can really be integrated securely and effectively, but even so, more and more e-discovery services in Jacksonville have started the adaptation of this system due to the reason that they find the benefits outweighing a few of the drawbacks.

One of the major areas the e-discovery experts are concerned about is the issue of security. Storage of vital information on a cloud based system basically means that one faces security threat should the system be hacked into online. This may result in many companies making huge losses when their systems get hacked and their information compromised. Advancements are being made to make the cloud system even more secure, but the experts are still very much concerned, as even big firms suffer from hacking and related exploits.

Another upcoming problem e-discovery services experts are seeing is the problem of implementation of a legal hold on information kept on the cloud systems. In a recent report on e-discovery and the cloud integration, it cited some concerns on the security protocols needed for their full implementation. It did mention the LAPD hiring Google to apply a cloud system for their ESI (electronically stored information) but this did not go well, the reason being that there were some security based issues that had to be looked at by Google before this migration of the ESI could be carried out. The second problem that came up during the migration process was the speed of data transfer. In this case, all of these shortcomings pushed back the progress of implementing e-discovery and the cloud to some other time.

A further example was recently given during a very recent survey made concerning –The Cloud and E-discovery services. Most of the respondents said that they were making use of the cloud-based solutions, they make use of range from hosted email archiving to other famous applications. Many e-discovery services in Jacksonville are knowingly or unknowingly storing discoverable information data in the cloud system. Most e-discovery experts are asking a question, whether there is a plan in place for e-discovery should the need arise. According to that survey, the answer to the query is an overwhelming and resounding "no." Only about sixteen percent of respondents showed that an e-discovery plan was in place for cloud based information management solutions. A quarter of them responded that they didn’t have an e-discovery plan in place, but what is really alarming is the over half of the respondents were not aware of the existence of the plan. This basically means that should they face an investigation or litigation, then they will be left straggling to collect important data from the cloud. That may, in turn, mean high expenses and difficulty making informed legal decisions faster.

5 Tips for Choosing E-Discovery Software in Jacksonville

The ever rising number of corporate related investigations, regulatory audits, and law suits firms and organizations very often make a choice in the retaining of every business record since none of them is sure of what might be essential in the future as a proof for litigation. It might be Word documents, video, electronic mail, chats, audio or spreadsheets, federal and state regulations have a rule that firms and organizations make production of these records faster when an e-Discovery request is made. The courts gives clear instruction that the e-discovery requests must be mate at all cost failure to which millions of dollars might be lost in fines.

Some of the companies and organizations in Jacksonville depend on outside agencies for their e-Discovery services while others have their own in house solutions. The first option might be useful in the condition where the concerned companies do not deal with much data and where the e-Discovery requests rarely occur. Where there is a rampant litigation, depending on the outside e-Discovery service providers could more expensive and the possibility of low level services that might not meet the expectations. This is where a choice for a good e-Discovery software solution comes in. But with so many choices to, firms must be careful in evaluation of their wants before determination of the right e-Discovery software.

They should make an investment in not only affordable e-discovery software, but the one that gives a good ROI.

Make a choice between the multiple solutions vs. Single Solution- This might be a silent point, since there is no given solution that has the ability of managing every single aspect of e-discovery. One should make a focus on a solution that gives address with a unified application.

Basically electronic data is created and kept in an unstructured manner. It can be found in various places, an inclusion of this being network drives, desktops and laptops, PDAs, Smart-phones, content and document management systems or even storage and archiving systems. The e-Discovery software should be versatile enough to reprocess and analyze data from all of these different sources.

The software should be very effective in optimizing of search accuracy. Failure to perform this might lead to very serious shortcomings like the waste of time, money and energy.

The speed is also very vital. When giving a response to legal requests, time is an important factor as every second counts. If the e-discovery software is too slow then it’s not worthy having it. Good e-discovery software should be the one that is easy to deploy, make use of, and maintain.

Making an investment in good E-discovery software can give assurance to firms and organizations during the process of making a response to legal requests and litigation faster and effortlessly.

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