There are a lot of risks involved while owning a company. You might become a victim of cybercriminal attacks, massive data breaches, and many more. In these situations, your best bet would be to alert the authorities and cooperate with them by providing all the relevant information. The benefits of eDiscovery in legal matters cannot be overstated. Nowadays, various tools are available to assist in it, including the early case assessment or ECA tool.
What Is eDiscovery?
Electronic information is more complex than physical information because of various data and their different features. That’s why collecting and reviewing that information is referred to as eDiscovery or electronic discovery. It is done in several steps to ensure the data collected is genuine and malware-free.
It is extremely important because it gives access to all the electronically stored information (ESI), such as pictures, videos, emails, documents, chats, etc., that can be used as evidence in court.
Benefits of eDiscovery tools
1. Time-saving
eDiscovery tools significantly reduces the time consumption in almost all legal processes. According to a study, a lawyer takes an average of 51 minutes to collect essential documents in a litigation process; however, an eDiscovery tool can complete the job in only 16 minutes. Therefore, saving almost 35 minutes. This amount of time can be invested in more high-value tasks allowing law firms to deliver better results to their clients.
These tools also automate the process of managing the collected documents. Therefore, a lawyer can concentrate on other pressing matters rather than wasting time managing the ESI for court exhibition.
2. Risk Analysis
Analyzing risks beforehand is essential in legal matters as one mistake, and you face the consequences. The tools such as early case assessment software help measure the risks involved in a case by evaluating the ESI. This allows you to change your legal strategy to turn the case in your favor. The effectiveness of ECA depends on the software you use, so make sure you invest in the best.
3. Gain Better Information
Even if the company data has a size of 1 gigabyte only, it can contain a lot of information with hundreds of documents and other files. Chances are, most of them might not be relevant to the case itself. So isn’t it difficult to screen every file manually?
eDiscovery tools facilitate automated assistance in screening and extracting the relevant case files, thus providing you with better information quickly.
4. Compliant ESI Retention
The ESI is preserved according to various complex standards so that there’s no manipulation of the documents. If the rules are not followed properly, it can lead to substantial penalties.
While digital documents are easier to preserve than paper documents, the process can become pretty chaotic if you don’t use the right eDiscovery tool. Manually transferring and saving the data to hard drives can risk their appropriate placement, alter or erase their metadata, or convert their format. These things are vital for ESI compliance demonstration.
Hopefully, now you are aware of the importance of eDiscovery tools in today’s world. You might have observed that digitization is also necessary for legal matters. eDiscovery has been a great help since it came into existence. More and more companies are launching these tools every day, but you need to choose the right one as legal matters can be pretty sensitive.
