Wortzmans’ Crystal Ball – 2014

2013 was an interesting year for e-discovery and Information Governance. At Wortzmans, we have activated our digital crystal ball in order to provide some predictions on what may lie ahead in the coming year:
​

• Increased collaboration, transparency and disclosure – The U.S has the cooperation proclamation, and a similar precept is being developed in Canada. Clearly, there is increased emphasis on parties to cooperate in e-discovery, particularly as the courts become more familiar with advances in technology and data complexity.
• Greater emphasis on mastering e-discovery tools – The future is now. We’ve been predicting for years that as younger lawyers who are more comfortable with technology move up to more senior positions, the widespread use of e-discovery and litigation technology will increase. This past year in the U.S., we have seen judges mandate the use of technology to filter and produce data more efficiently. This trend will rapidly migrate north of the border, leading to more cost effective e-discovery projects. The most vocal advocates will be those that can select the right technology for the particular matter, cooperate sufficiently with opposing counsel on the use of that technology, and explain it clearly to the court.
• Heightened focus on the cloud – Many organizations have been migrating their data from behind-the-firewall systems to the cloud. We see this trend increasing as the cost-benefits of cloud presence is recognized. Clients will also start to realize that cloud e-discovery needs to be applied to data in situ. There’s just too much data for it to be copied from one data center to another. E-discovery in the cloud needs to take place in the same cloud as the data.
• Increased privacy awareness – Thanks to Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, as well as several high-profile data breaches this past year, organizations are going to pay significantly more attention to their data security and privacy obligations. PIPEDA and other personal information protection requirements will lead to an increased use of redactions, leading to increased pressure on litigation technology providers to address this time-consuming and expensive activity.
• Continual unstructured data challenges – e-discovery, information governance, investigation, data migration, and privacy are not disparate, unique issues. In fact, they all have the same basic problem, which manifests itself in different use cases. In 2014, we anticipate that more organizations will start to determine that the skills, tools and processes that solve one challenge can be applied to all the others.