I don’t have to tell you that the enforced social distancing resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot of business processes practically overnight.  It has also changed the nature of discovery processes.  This recent article from Forensic Discovery discusses how the pandemic has revolutionized discovery collection – and just how much it has been revolutionized.

The article How the Pandemic Has Revolutionized Discovery Collection discusses (among other things) the extent to which the pandemic revolutionized discovery collection. According to Rob Robinson’s ComplexDiscovery site, initial market model estimates for 2020 suggested that approximately 95% of collections would take place on-site, with only 5% to be performed remotely. But the outbreak and impact of COVID-19 and the corresponding location-dependent travel and group aggregation restrictions changed that dramatically, reducing estimates for the percentage of collections to be conducted onsite to 10% for 2020, while the estimated percentage of collections to be performed remotely in 2020 increased from 5% to 90%.  That raised the estimated market for remote collections essentially tenfold: from original market size projections of $80 million to $800 million!

So, what are other reasons for the rise in remote collections?  When should you consider on-site vs. remote forensic collection?  And is remote forensic collection forensically sound and defensible?  Check out their article here to find out about all the factors that have revolutionized discovery collection.

So, what do you think?  Has your organization seen a rise in remote collections for discovery?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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