B&L Associates

Companies continue to neglect standardized eDiscovery strategies

November 7, 2011

Although attempts at industry standardization were originally expected to drive eDiscovery forward, a recent Law.com report revealed that waning support for the initiative may compromise its long-term success.

When the Electronic Discovery Reference Model debuted its EDRM-XML framework in February of 2008, project coordinators believed that they were writing what would become the industry standard format of performing eDiscovery data exchanges. By "providing a robust, flexible, transparent and well-documented schema supported by a robust tool set," practitioners could significantly reduce the time, risk and investment associated with eDiscovery processes.

However, three and a half year after its release, Law.com contributor Evan Koblentz suggested that the project has failed to break through with significant vendor adoption rates.

"There are 24 companies listed on the project website as having at least one compliant product, but none actively call for their customer to use EDRM-XML as the primary method of moving data," Koblentz explained.

Critics have questioned the relevance of the initiative, according to Koblentz, wondering if the current demands of eDiscovery processes merit the need for such a solution. However, as data volumes continue to expand and media management becomes more complex, it may be interesting to see if the industry revisits the topic of standardization.