Even with two posts a day, so many stories, so little time!  Meant to cover this yesterday, but couldn’t quite get to it.  A couple of days ago, Rob Robinson’s terrific Complex Discovery site discussed the eDiscovery Review market and – not surprisingly, in light of the pandemic – made some adjustments to the estimate of the Review market for 2020.  But, in my opinion, that’s not even the most interesting part of his article.

In Revisions and Decisions? New Considerations for eDiscovery Secure Remote Reviews, Rob, while noting that the pandemic “does not appear at this early juncture in the evaluation of its on-going impact to have significantly altered the task percentage estimates in 2020 for collection, processing, and review”, does adjust modeling estimates for market size estimations for the review task of eDiscovery downward.  He also adjusts the percentage distribution between on-site and remote reviews dramatically, as you might expect – obviously, there are very few (if any) on-site reviews being conducted currently.  So, how much does he adjust the review market and the distribution?  You can click on the link at the top of this paragraph to find out.  😉

But, that’s not all.  Even more interesting is the second half of Rob’s article, where he identifies several qualifying questions that clients should be asking to evaluate the ability for their review providers to provide secure remote review services.  Needless to say, review service providers better have good answers for these questions as well.  Want to play Twenty Questions?  Rob gives you 26 terrific questions you should ask, or be prepared to answer, depending on whether you’re the client or the review provider.

I’m sure several review providers had to scramble once the pandemic forced remote work scenarios, but I’m convinced the remote review scenario will become the way of the future with regard to eDiscovery review.  With cloud review platforms increasingly popular and the ability to lower infrastructure costs that would often be necessary to support on-site reviews, review providers have now had to figure out how to conduct their reviews remotely – and securely.  Even as society opens back up, I would be surprised if the review providers go back fully (or anywhere near fully) to the level of on-site reviews they conducted before.

So, what do you think?  Do you agree that we will never see the level of on-site reviews that we did before?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer 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.