Trying to Teach a Rhino to Dance

I laughed out loud this morning while reading “You Can’t Make Lawyers into Techies: 3 Lessons About LPM” from Pam Woldow, General Counsel at Edge International. She quotes the adage, “never try to teach a rhino to dance. The results are generally unsatisfactory and it annoys the rhino.”

The legal profession in general has been frustratingly slow to embrace both technology and project management in managing litigation. We don’t have that luxury in the eDiscovery world. As a lawyer whose practice is focused on managing complex electronic discovery projects, I have spent lots of time developing project plans that integrate technology and process to reduce cost and increase the quality of eDiscovery work (identification, preservation, collection, early case assessment, data processing, data filtering, document review and production).

Naturally, I also spend lots of time advocating for increased technology utilization and project management discipline. Here are a few of the dance lessons I have been teaching for several years with varying levels of success:

Embrace Technology: Technology continues to evolve in ways that affect both the types of eDiscovery problems we face and the types of solutions we deploy to solve eDiscovery problems. Many lawyers will never fully grasp the inner workings of data indexing and search or understand how document review tools work. However, understanding that these tools have value and staffing your team with folks that do understand them will give your litigation team an edge on those that insist on living in a paper only world or wait so long to address the eDiscovery aspect of their case that they are at a strategic disadvantage.

Implement Project Management Discipline: An eDiscovery project has many moving parts. This is not to say that other aspects of litigation are simple. However, the folks litigating the case have likely been through many cases and the steps have become second nature. The eDiscovery aspect of litigation is far from second nature for most litigators so project management discipline is essential: identify and involve the right people as soon as possible, develop a realistic project plan that is customized for the task and deploy technology solutions that are defensible and cost effective.

Find the Right People: Both eDiscovery and project management are complex topics that are not mastered by attending a CLE or reading a few books. Dennis Kiker posted an excellent article nearby on the difference between a lawyer that has dealt with a few eDiscovery issues in her cases and a lawyer that focuses her practice on the law, technology and process of eDiscovery. Quarterbacking the eDiscovery aspect of a case is best done by someone who has been doing so long enough to see the anomalies and to know how easily the budget or timeline can go off the rails.

We are progressing to a time where eDiscovery is just another routine part of litigation.  To get to that point, we need to understand that technology is not going away and that eDiscovery is best handled by getting the right people involved early to set up and execute a defensible plan.

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