Early Case Assessment (ECA) Insight from Industry Experts

Is Early Case Assessment working? In one of the most effective panels at the Masters Conference, D.C., six of the foremost ECA thought leaders from the US and the UK came together for a lively discussion regarding ECA. Shawnna Childress from Women in eDiscovery led the discussion as panel moderator. Panel members included Steve Akers of Digital Reef, William W. Belt, Jr. of LeClairRyan, Chris Dale of The eDisclosure Information Project, Browning Marean of DLA Piper, and Michelle Treadwell Briggs of Goodwin Procter.

Starting with major changes in eDiscovery, the panel addressed all aspects of ECA exploring specifically what is not working, what is, and the evolution of tools and technologies.

Below is the panel broken up into 4 videos; “Early Case Assessment: Changes in eDiscovery”, “What Isn’t Working”, “The Evolution of Technology”, “and the final video “Early Case Assessment: Is It working”.

In the final video Childress asked each panel member to summarize their points and answer the over-arching question about ECA- Is it working? The panel gave a mix of responses.

William Belt of LeClairRyan believed the answer to be a positive one. “Yes, I mean it is working and technology is getting better and better… we are gaining better insight into our data sets,” replied Belt.

Steve Akers, Founder and CTO of Digital Reef, added to Belt’s response. “Lawyers and litigation support people are seeing what works and we are taking that next step in the evolution. As we all can collaborate on these cloud services, I think the problem will actually get better. There will be software that will be developed that learns from a large population of people that we can all benefit from,” said Akers.

Chris Dale, Michelle Briggs, and Browning Marean also had some very interesting final remarks.

To watch the panel, click on the four videos listed below. For more videos visit our Video Tab.