Guidance Software Outlines the Five Most Common Pitfalls of Outdated eDiscovery : Outdated Methods to Search and Collect Electronic Evidence is Costly, Disruptive and Leaves Organizations Exposed

PASADENA, Calif. (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) June 24, 2008 -- Guidance Software Inc., The World Leader in Digital Investigations™, today outlined the five most common pitfalls associated with outdated approaches to eDiscovery. eDiscovery is now a standard component of the civil litigation process, fostered by a growing awareness among counsel and the bench that much of the evidence is digital. Without the right technology in place, discovery can be an expensive and time consuming experience.

“Most of the compelling evidence in litigation today is digital,” said Patrick Burke, Assistant General Counsel for Guidance Software. “Yet, many large companies lack a cost-efficient enterprise class approach to enable rapid, thorough, and scalable data searching and collection that can reach every employee’s data on laptops, workstations and servers. Without the capability to reach all the digital evidence across the company’s network, a major organization’s e-Discovery experience is very painful in terms of time, cost and business disruption.”

The five most common pitfalls associated with outdated approaches to eDiscovery:

1. Unnecessarily High Costs. Major organizations can incur millions in out-of-pocket costs annually, mostly in the form of outside consultant fees to collect and process data. These fees – including processing fees for culling, deduping and creating load files for attorney review platforms – can be reduced to zero if the proper technology is brought in-house. As the volume of electronic data, including email, continues to multiply, so do the costs of eDiscovery when out-of-date technology is used. In many instances, skyrocketing eDiscovery costs force organizations to prematurely settle cases or, at a minimum, compromise their litigation strategy.
2. Inability to Collect Electronic Evidence Over The Company’s Network. If a company cannot collect evidence in an automated way across its network, it must resort to manual collections. This means the companies’ collection team (or teams provided by outside vendors) must be sent to each office where the computers are located, incurring expenses for their time, travel and accommodations.
3. Business Disruption. Manual collection methods require the collection team to have the employee halt use of their computer for several hours each while the data is being collected – a serious disruption to that employee or executive’s productivity. Sometimes entire servers must be taken off-line, which is even more disruptive to operations. When legal issues are sensitive, manual collections can increase employee paranoia and sometimes encourage potential witnesses to act rashly by deleting potential evidence.
4. No Triage and Bad Filtering. Much of the expense and burden associated with eDiscovery is incurred in the collection aspect of the investigation process. For instance, without enterprise collection technology, collecting files from hundreds or even thousands of computers distributed across multiple locations must be performed manually. With no means to triage and filter out irrelevant data, the collection is overbroad, with a great deal of irrelevant data aggregated into a central database where it is then finally processed and searched.
5. Destruction of Computer Evidence. Destruction of computer evidence can be a major problem, and by some estimates, occurs in some form in most cases. Computer investigations that do not follow noninvasive forensic methodologies will likely result in altering and even deleting the target data. It’s critical to establish a digital chain of custody to establish that the acquired computer evidence is not tampered with or inadvertently altered, thereby insulating the company from even speculative allegations of mishandled digital evidence.

“The traditional approach to eDiscovery involves gathering immense amounts of data, and then paying hundreds of dollars per gigabyte to cull and process the data to be loaded into an attorney review application,” added Burke. “This process results in ever-increasing costs as the volume of data within a corporation grows. Without proper planning, established procedures, and enterprise class technology, eDiscovery costs at large businesses will continue to spin out of control. That is why many large companies are implementing systemized in house processes for collecting and processing e-mails and electronic documents that may need to be disclosed for litigation or in response to regulatory investigations. This enables the organization to avoid manual and overbroad collections of data by executing more surgical search and collection efforts.”

About Guidance Software

Guidance Software is recognized worldwide as the industry leader in digital investigative solutions. Its EnCase(r) platform provides the foundation for government, corporate and law enforcement organizations to conduct thorough, network-enabled, and court-validated computer investigations of any kind, such as responding to eDiscovery requests, conducting internal investigations, responding to regulatory inquiries or performing data and compliance auditing - all while maintaining the integrity of the data. There are more than 27,000 licensed users of the EnCase technology worldwide, and thousands attend Guidance Software’s renowned training programs annually. Validated by numerous courts, corporate legal departments, government agencies and law enforcement organizations worldwide, EnCase has been honored with industry awards and recognition from eWEEK, SC Magazine, Network Computing, and the Socha-Gelbmann survey. For more information about Guidance Software, visit www.guidancesoftware.com.

See Also:

• Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development Chooses Silanis for Web-based Electronic Signing
• Dentist Consultants Form Multi-Disciplined Northern Dental Alliance
• New York Trial Lawyers Association President Speaks on "Impeaching Defense Expert" During Melvin Belli Society Seminar at AJA 2008 Annual Convention
• Bird Golf Academy Adds Minnesota's Top-Rate Grand View Lodge to its Fold With Long-Term Teaching Contracts
• Staff Financial Group Launches Videoheadhunter.net, a Video Site Encouraging Job Seekers to Utilize Video Resume Technology and Social Networking Sites Like LinkedIn to Turbo Charge Their Job Search

[Via Legal / Law]