Published on September 22nd, 2021 | by Sunit Nandi

How can your business benefit from eDiscovery Tools?

According to recent statistics, commercial litigations are rising, and the US spends around $1.5 million on disputes per $1 billion revenue. Evidence plays a vital role in contesting disputes and reaching towards settlement. Modern businesses store documents in electronic formats like email, word documents, social media, instant messaging, and smartphone applications.

Finding the correct document from the electronic database can be a daunting task for your legal teams. That’s where eDiscovery tools can simplify finding legal documents about commercial litigation quickly. As per recent findings, a typical lawyer spends around 51 minutes finding a critical document during the litigation process.

However, with the right eDiscovery software, searching key documents is reduced to 15 to 16 minutes. Here is some vital information on how your business can benefit from eDiscovery software.

Litigation Holds Are Essential

US laws don’t allow deletion of any content and processes during legal action. Organizations are required to preserve all relevant data until the court announces its final decision on litigations.

The court has discretionary power to impose any sanctions, fines, or press criminal charges against businesses that don’t comply with these legal requirements. At the minimum, organizations that cannot produce data for any reason may harm the company’s reputation.

eDiscovery tools can help your legal team find and present documents in court to support your position in the litigation. Besides, the court has predefined time limits to present documentary evidence using eDiscovery software.

Responds to Requests Rapidly

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern the civil proceedings in the American district courts. As per the FRCP rule, a party involved in a civil suit or litigation needs to reply within 21 days after being served with the order.

The FRCP Rule 26(a)(1) mentions that the litigants need to understand their data assets and the discovery capabilities before filing commercial or civil litigation in court. Hence both parties need to have good eDiscovery capabilities that will help rapid content production in the court.

Identify Content That Can Be Accessed and Not Accessed

All litigants need to mention what content they can produce or not produce in the court. If the evaluation determines that some content cannot be produced or is too expensive to produce, you still need to present information about the content as per FRCP laws. For example, if a backup tape cannot be read, you still need to mention what kind of information it holds.

The court also agrees backup tapes can pose problems in eDiscovery. In the case of Johnson v. Neiman, the defendant could not produce emails stored in 5880 tapes, and the court agreed the defendant did not need to produce the data. Since the defendant could furnish other relevant data through eDiscovery, the court did not object to the data not recovered through the same software.

Managing Different Data Avenues

As mentioned earlier, an organization manages diverse data avenues like active storage systems (hard drive, email), cloud, mobile, backups, offline (shared server), and hidden. The eDiscovery software can grab data from diverse data avenues.

Better Information

Litigation may require your legal team to analyze hundreds of relevant files in a short time. The eDiscovery software comes with full-text search tools to help your legal team find what they need quickly and easily.

You can assign barcodes to documents when scanned, and metadata can be stored along with it for future reference. The eDiscovery software also has a comparison tool to help you avoid redundancies.

Dedicated eDiscovery software comes with tools for improved access to data. For example, the software provides a central hub for easy access and viewing information. The legal teams have complete control over who has access to the data and commenting on it.

To sum up, these are a few reasons suggesting that your organization needs the best eDiscovery software.

Tags: benefit, eDiscovery, tools

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.