eDiscovery teams today face rising pressure to lower costs and improve productivity. As a result, organizations are increasingly moving away from proprietary platforms in favor of efficient and affordable managed eDiscovery solutions.
In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of using managed eDiscovery services and what to look for in a provider.
What Are Managed eDiscovery Services?
Managed eDiscovery is a model that allows companies, law firms, and government agencies to access critical eDiscovery services in a safe, easy, and cost-effective way.
Until recently, organizations had to manage their eDiscovery platforms and infrastructure internally. This approach is expensive and inefficient. It also places a heavy burden on in-house IT staff who have to build, deploy, and manage the platforms.
But now, it’s possible to obtain eDiscovery services through a third-party provider. In other words, you can access everything you need to manage eDiscovery from a cloud-based portal for a low cost.
Benefits of Managed eDiscovery Services
Using a managed eDiscovery service is generally much easier, more reliable, and more affordable than building and maintaining your system.
This strategy allows companies to focus more on eDiscovery instead of managing back-end infrastructure and system maintenance. As such, it comes as no surprise that managed eDiscovery is quickly becoming more popular among legal teams of all sizes, from small groups to large organizations.
Here are some of the top benefits of working with a managed eDiscovery provider.
1. Instant Deployments
Building and deploying a proprietary eDiscovery platform can take a considerable amount of time. And once you deploy a platform, it requires ongoing maintenance and support.
By working with a third-party managed services provider, you can gain instant access to high-quality eDiscovery services. This allows you to quickly roll out a new platform to all onsite users with minimal hassle.
2. No Infrastructure
Network infrastructure is one of the top costs eDiscovery providers face. After all, the software requires supporting IT resources and connectivity, potentially making it very difficult to source, manage, and protect infrastructure.
A third-party managed services provider takes care of all the necessary underlying infrastructure that you need to power eDiscovery software. This significantly reduces costs and removes a tremendous burden for IT.
At the same time, a managed services provider future-proofs your infrastructure and performs regular upgrades to keep the system running smoothly. This way, you always have access to the latest and most powerful infrastructure on the market without doing any work.
3. Performance Guarantees
Suffice it to say that there is little room for system downtime and performance issues during a fast-moving court case or audit. In fact, IT failure could potentially lead to court fines and penalties. Court officials typically have little patience for IT-related issues during court cases.
Managed services providers typically offer service guarantees. As a result, they typically put a great deal of care and effort into customer satisfaction and system maintenance.
Working with a managed services provider for eDiscovery leads to greater uptime, fewer connectivity issues, faster data transmissions, and, of course, less ire from the courts.
4. Regulatory Compliance
Today, companies and law firms face an ever-growing list of regulations, like HIPAA in healthcare and GDPR in Europe. These regulations can change from time to time, impacting software systems along the way. Unfortunately, companies that fail to comply with evolving industry and government standards risk facing heavy fines and penalties.
One of the best parts about working with a managed services provider for eDiscovery is staying in compliance with evolving regulations. Providers usually track regulations and apply the latest changes and updates to remain compliant. As a result, customers can keep using their platforms without fear of violating essential protocols.
5. Lower Costs
Running an in-house eDiscovery platform can be very expensive when factoring in needs like network services, IT personnel, upgrades, maintenance, and utilities, to name a few examples. This list of expenses goes on and on.
Outsourcing to a managed services provider reduces expenses considerably. For example, you won’t have to worry about licensing costs, emergency repairs, and consulting fees. It also requires less employee training.
6. Cutting-Edge Services
eDiscovery is a rapidly evolving industry. New trends and technologies are constantly coming into existence. As such, legal eDiscovery professionals need to keep up with changing requirements to stay efficient and competitive.
It can be challenging to stay on top of the latest evolving eDiscovery standards. But a managed services provider makes this easy by streamlining upgrades and feature enhancements.
What To Look For in a Managed eDiscovery Services Provider
As you can see, a managed eDiscovery services provider can lower costs, eliminate barriers, and position your firm for success. That said, it’s important to be very careful when selecting a provider. After all, eDiscovery is a critical legal need and there is little room for error.
With that in mind, here are some things to look for in a managed eDiscovery service.
End-to-End Service
A vendor should take care of all technology needs and provide you with an optimized and efficient service that’s capable of providing lightning-fast data transmissions and searches.
Before you sign an agreement with a provider, it’s necessary to ensure they can provide a smooth experience and deliver optimal service. You’ll also want to scour the service-level agreement to make sure it aligns with your company’s needs and expectations.
User-Friendly eDiscovery Platform
An eDiscovery platform should be easy to learn and operate. If the platform is overly complex and difficult to navigate, it could lead to pushback from employees and decrease worker happiness.
Spend some time taking demos, reading online reviews, and talking with industry experts during the sales process. Get a sense of what to look for in a platform. There are many solutions on the market with varying levels of quality and features. Spend some time to make sure you get exactly what you need.
Rapid-Response Support
Eventually, something will go wrong with your eDiscovery service that will require troubleshooting. And when this happens, it helps to have a single point of contact who can step in and address the issue.
IT workers benefit from regaining nights and weekends without having to continuously monitor the system for uptime and performance. And attorneys can rest easy knowing that when something goes wrong, there is a support team on standby ready to jump in and fix the issue.
Instant Scalability
Legal departments need to be ready to handle large cases with thousands or millions of files. For this reason, a managed services provider should be able to rapidly scale up or down to accommodate large cases and data storage needs.
Predictive Coding
Another vital feature to look for in a managed eDiscovery provider is predictive coding, or using machine learning to analyze large data sets, sort through information, and make fast decisions.
Not all managed services providers offer predictive coding, so be sure to ask about it when talking with different providers. If a provider doesn’t provide access to predictive coding, it’s a sign they are not offering the latest features.
Venio Systems: A One-Stop-Shop for Managed eDiscovery Services
Venio Systems offers an industry-leading eDiscovery platform as a fully managed service. We provide everything you need to ensure fast, reliable, and secure eDiscovery. With the Venio platform, you can lower costs, expedite data transfers, and minimize review times—all while achieving better legal outcomes.
Experience Venio Systems in action by scheduling a free demo today.
