Cos Embrace E-Discovery 2.0

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Clearwell Systems, Inc., a pioneer in Intelligent E-Discovery, today announced that leading enterprises are embracing next-generation technologies, collectively known as E-Discovery 2.0,” to manage growing case volumes, accelerate early case analysis and reduce costs.

A series of fundamental changes have made e-discovery far more important, expensive and complex than it was in the 1990s. Foremost among them is a shift from voicemail to email as the primary form of communication, creating a written record where none previously existed. Companies have begun storing this information on disk as the cost of disk storage has fallen precipitously, from $2.04 per GB in 2004 to $0.77 per GB in 2006. At the same time, changes in the legal and regulatory environment are forcing companies to preserve, analyze and review this growing body of information for e-discovery. For example, recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have moved e-discovery up in the process, forcing companies to have an e-discovery plan within days of a suit being filed. The result is that manual e-discovery processes have become overly time-consuming and expensive, with their costs often exceeding the amount in dispute.

Companies have responded to these challenges by adopting E-Discovery 2.0, which leverages next-generation technologies to reduce the cost, risk and duration of e-discovery. E-Discovery 2.0 technologies include:

• Highly scalable archiving solutions for efficient email storage;
• Sophisticated analysis applications which cull down large volumes of email to only those messages relevant to the case;