Do Vendor "Claims" Raise Unrealistic Expectations?

I attended a statewide ILTA event today, for Litigation Support Professionals, that attracted quite a few folks from around Ohio, as well as neighboring states. The sessions were good, and I may have a few blog posts inspired by a few of the things that were discussed, but one thing in particular grabbed my attention. You’ll have to forgive me because I don’t recall which member of the panel said it, but the idea was that as an in-house Litigation Support Professional, you need to brag about the work you do, not just so that attorneys know, but also because you need them to understand what you do so they don’t get the impression that’s it easy. Any attorney or paralegal involved with e-discovery is going to get emails, newsletters or phone calls from vendors, some of whom might make claims about what they can do that make it seem like processing a terabyte of data and having it ready for review in just a couple of days is easy. It might be easy for a large vendor with tons of resources, but for in-house Litigation Support with limited resources, it isn’t at all!

I can’t say that I had thought of that before, but I can see now where an attorney might read up on some vendor materials and get the impression that collecting and processing data is a snap, and that we should go ahead and take care of this in-house, when we might not really have the resources. It’s something I’ll be keeping an eye out, that’s for sure!

Really, aren’t the unrealistic expectations from watching CSI enough? 😉

Follow these topics: LitigationSupport