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By Beau Holt, Esq.

Published on Mon, October 26, 2015

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The 2015 EDI conference brought together judges, corporate counsel, regulators, and service providers for nearly a week of meetings, panels, and sharing knowledge and experiences. It was my first time at EDI and I came away very impressed on several fronts. Most impressively, the discussions mixed high-level strategic topics as well as practical discussions of day-to-day issues, challenges, and ideas on solutions.

One of the sessions that stood out to me highlighted strategic and practical challenges and solutions related to reporting key performance indicators and metrics in ediscovery. This panel consisted of a cross-section of corporate counsel, in-house counsel, and a service provider. The corporate counsel on the panel identified that uniformity and consistency in reporting was one of their biggest challenges. Specifically, they all agreed they were unable to get uniform reporting across their various providers, whether it be law firms, ediscovery technology service providers, or review providers. In addition, they were unable to get uniform reporting across the same category of providers, such as those businesses that have a panel of review providers, a panel of law firms, or a panel of technology service providers. 

A lively discussion ensued, with one audience member asking about dashboards, a topic the panel members indicated was a great idea, but had not been well executed on to date and wasn’t flexible enough to provide the granularity and diversity of information that they needed. The panel agreed on three points required for proper reporting:

  1. Get various outside counsel and review companies to use more uniform coding terminology for relevance or responsiveness,
  2. Privilege and QC/overturn should follow closely by getting providers to use uniform units of measure (docs or page or GB or percentage) and to define cull/filter,
  3. Conversion and production should be performed in a way that allows apples to apples comparisons. 

I’d love to hear from you directly with thoughts on how best to collaborate/partner to achieve proper reporting, questions and whether you share my optimism that it’s attainable. Please reach out to me at bholt@lhediscovery.com.
About the Author
Beau Holt, Esq.

Vice President of Service Delivery

As Vice President of Service Delivery, Beau manages Lighthouse’s Global Service Delivery team, which includes the eDiscovery Technical Services, Client Services Project Management, Review Analytics and Consulting Services, Continuous Improvement, Platform and Product Support and Quality and Operational Excellence departments. Beau works with senior department heads across Lighthouse’s global operations centers to optimize how these departments come together around shared goals. He brings decades of extensive ediscovery project management experience to his role, and is building next generation practices and solutions, while ensuring consistent exceptional quality across all teams.

Before joining Lighthouse, Beau was an attorney for K&L Gates. There he managed litigation discovery, directed and managed both large and small project teams, developed project parameters, and analyzed clients' methodologies related to records management and ediscovery. He negotiated, created and executed discovery response plans covering retention, collection, review, and production of electronic data in complex commercial litigation matters and governmental and regulatory investigations. While at K&L, Beau also directed and coordinated data review and production efforts of project teams comprised of more than 100 attorneys and technical staff located across multiple offices; developed and implemented training programs for attorneys, paralegals, and technical support staff; and trained review attorneys in standard document review operating procedures, matter specific background information, and usage of proprietary software.

Prior to K&L Gates, Beau served in the United States Navy aboard the USS GRASP, managing the ship’s electrical shop and electricians.

Beau graduated with his B.A. in Psychology from Auburn University and received his J.D. from the University of Washington. As an attorney with 19 years of ediscovery project management experience, Beau has a deep knowledge of all aspects of complex litigation and is a frequent guest speaker at industry events.

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