I ran into Doug Austin coming out of the CLOC Global Institute’s Legal Data Intelligence launch last Wednesday. As legal technology industry watchers, we agreed that the LDI initiative is a logical, positive evolution of the trend we’ve been writing about since ChatGPT’s introduction 18 months ago: The eDiscovery discipline is at the forefront of next-generation legal innovation; its professionals continue to lead development of process standards, and the versatility of core eDiscovery technology is expanding its use across and beyond legal applications.

Several of LDI’s founding members have leveraged their skills and experience as eDiscovery practitioners to create new career paths; they now empower firms and law departments in their respective organizations to make data-driven decisions. Indeed, the LDI website includes templates for emerging legal data intelligence job descriptions. CLOC VP Farrah Pepper challenged legal operations professionals to bring new hires to next year’s CGI.

The LDI framework is built to complement the existing EDRM and CLOC Core 12. I understand the feedback some have shared that the model is not fully baked; to practitioners at the progressive organizations that tend to gravitate to events like CGI, the website’s content may seem like scaffolding without much substance. In this time of rapidly evolving innovation, however, I respect the committee’s willingness to release what they readily acknowledge is a work-in-progress, and to solicit input from other industry professionals. Those of us who focus our practices in these areas need to lean in to build out standards.

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This move to standardize legal data intelligence processes references well-established foundations in the preservation, collection, analysis, and production of electronic data in discovery. It will be interesting to watch how the LDI initiative may address more complex use cases, and potentially address judicial concerns about GenAI methodologies by providing guidance for due diligence in AI technology investments, AI vendor assessment and management, and process for implementation in early business cases.

For more information on the Legal Data Intelligence initiative, visit https://legaldataintelligence.org.

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.