I have enjoyed getting to know Nextpoint's perspective and products via a great morning coffee with Jim Lancaster and through their Nextpoint Newsletter available at http://www.discoverycloud.nextpoint.com/.
In a pre-Thanksgiving post by Nextpoint's John Krause entitled, Low Cost eDiscovery: The Secret to Making Legal Services Affordable, I think that we see that Nextpoint is initiating a new conversation regarding the democratization of eDiscovery cost, affordability, and proportionality based on their cloud-based solutions. As John suggests in his article, these issues are quite relevant as FRCP updates are being considered.
I think that it is interesting to consider a few aspects of democratizing eDiscovery;
- Who benefits from "cost democracy?" Clients, firms, services providers?
- Is a "low-cost solution" an enterprise solution or, is it part of your solutions stable?
- Is the cloud a boon to small law or, is it more democratic than that?
Referring to my experience in large law firms, attempts to provide flexible eDiscovery options never completely satisfy all clients. Large law firms are often like hundreds of small firms under one umbrella. With each new client, large law firms are forced to calculate a new proportionality formula and capable, intuitive, and cost-efficient products could serve the single plaintiff or corporate monolith.