2014 In Review, and What to Expect In 2015

A Wortzmans tradition at this time of the year (apart from holiday parties) is to look back on the developments in e-discovery and information management over the past twelve months, and bring out our digital crystal ball to try and forecast what will be the hot button topics next year.

Certainly, cybersecurity was at the top of the information management list in 2014. The year started out with Target trying to recover from their Thanksgiving, 2013 breach. Then Home Depot was hit, followed closely by Kmart and several other large corporations. The recent Sony hack and its associated lawsuits (including one by former employees who are upset their personal information was not adequately protected) has garnered worldwide attention.

While cybersecurity is an important aspect of information management, the more mundane components of classifying and disposing of records are the real keys to tackling the IM leviathan.

On the e-discovery front, technology assisted review has become mainstream in Canada, with many Bay Street law firms jumping on the bandwagon. Although the understanding and execution of the technology is still being ironed out, terms like statistical sampling, predictive coding and data analysis are now commonly bantered about in litigation support departments.

The amendments to the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure are now 4 years old, and we are finally seeing discovery plans become a routine part of the litigation process. Some plans are well written, while others that we’ve seen don’t quite make the mark, but the trend is moving in the right direction and we are seeing more efficient discovery as a result of these plans.

So what does our e-crystal ball say for 2015? Here are our annual predictions for the coming year:

1. Cybersecurity will drive more organizations to seriously look at information management, and some will actually implement IM plans.
2. Information management software incorporating analytic tools that automatically classify records will continue to gain acceptance as organizations discover that trying to force manual classification is a losing battle.
3. Technology assisted review will continue to gain ground in medium to large document reviews, and many more law firms will employ statistical sampling and data analytics to avoid reviewing all records.

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As we say goodbye to 2014, we would like to wish all our readers a wonderful holiday season.