2023 State of the Industry Report
Doug Austin

2023 State of the Industry Report is Out! Here’s How to Get it!: eDiscovery Trends

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern! The 2023 State of the Industry Report is out! Here’s how to get it!

We started the year in the midst of “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting”, but we seemed to end the year in the era of “Loud Layoffs”, changing the dynamic of who was saying “Hasta la vista, baby!” to whom.

2022 also marked an increase in in-person activities – either in terms of working in the office (at least part of the time) or attending in-person conferences and other events. Covid is still here, of course, but more and more people are choosing to accept the risks of being infected by it, either due to comfort over vaccine protection, mere pandemic fatigue or both.

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For those of us in the eDiscovery industry, we saw much of the same – both in terms of resignations giving way to layoffs and more people getting back together in person (at least some of the time). Business marches on, sadly with perhaps a few less soldiers (for now, at least). Perhaps this era of uncertainty has cooled the investment market too. As of this writing, there were at least 20 mergers, acquisitions and investments (M&A+I) transactions reported by ComplexDiscovery in 2022 – a 63% decrease compared to 2021’s record 54 transactions!

Is the landscape changing for eDiscovery? That’s what we’re here to find out in the 2023 State of the Industry Report at eDiscovery Today!

eDiscovery Today launched its third annual State of the Industry Report Survey on November 14th, which (once again) consisted of ten questions and concluded it on December 6th. And 410 of you responded – 129 more than last year! Surely, you can’t be serious! Here are some of the highlights from your responses:

  • The breakdown of respondents was Software or Service Provider (41.6%), Law Firm (27.8%), Consultancy (15.5%), Corporation (9.9%), Government Entity (3.7%) and Other (1.5%).
  • Because of the number of respondents for the Law Firm, Software/Service Provider, Consultancy and Corporation, I have broken out the responses among those four demographics, so you can see how each segment has responded to the survey questions.
  • Over three of five respondents (60.2%) expect to continue to work remotely indefinitely, but almost a third (32.4%) of respondents that began working remotely when the pandemic hit have switched to either a hybrid of WFH and office or mostly office.
  • Over a third of respondents (34.1%) said they attended at as many in-person conferences as they did before the pandemic! And almost three-quarters of respondents (74.5%) attended at least one! Great to see you!
  • 29.2% of respondents use predictive coding in all or most of their cases, but 35.4% of respondents use it in very few or none of their cases. How does that compare to last year’s survey? Check out the report!
  • Discovery of data from mobile devices or collaboration apps? 31.9% of respondents discover mobile devices in all/most of their cases, while 22.8% of respondents do in very few/none of their cases. For collaboration apps, it’s 26.4% and 32.1% respectively.
  • There are also cumulative and breakdown results for number of respondents using eDiscovery for different use cases, the biggest eDiscovery related trend for 2023 and the eDiscovery challenge not being talked about enough!

As always, there’s a second component to the State of the Industry report. I also reached out to several industry thought leaders with questions about each of these survey areas and I have also included their observations* to add some additional perspective on these notable topics and trends as we head into 2023. Hopefully, this provides a unique perspective from the industry as a whole and from the thought leader community!

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So, how do you get the 45-page 2023 State of the Industry report? If you are currently an email follower of the blog, or if you completed the survey, you will be receiving a link to the report later today or tomorrow. If you’re not currently an email follower of the blog, you can get a FREE copy of the report (and any report eDiscovery Today publishes) simply by following the blog via email. To follow eDiscovery Today, enter your email address at the top of the right sidebar where it says “Follow Blog via Email” to receive the report as well as emails with links to new posts. It’s that easy!

Thanks to Mary Mack, Kaylee Walstad and the EDRM team for your support and sponsorship to promote the 2023 State of the Industry Report!

So, what do you think? Are you surprised by any of the survey results above? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

*Observations expressed in this report by thought leaders are their own and do not represent views of their employers, clients or partners.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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  3. […] We’ll be discussing eDiscovery trends including identifying and preserving relevant data, searching and reviewing large volumes of data, ensuring data security and privacy, managing the data from multiple sources, in various formats and in different languages, artificial Intelligence and machine learning, collaboration and communication and other trends shaping eDiscovery. We’ll even talk about eDiscovery Today’s 2023 State of the Industry report! […]

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