It’s an exciting time in the world of legal tech as SaaS ediscovery solutions, and cloud computing in general, represent an enormous amount of potential with nearly unlimited capacity of storage, power, and scalability, whether you’re handling small or very large matters. Once seen as something only big firms need to deal with for large cases, we’ve seen electronic communication in the workplace (like email and chat) become the norm and consequently ediscovery become a typical domain for law firms of all shapes and sizes. It makes perfect sense that the proliferation of an easy-to-use, cost-effective solution is the future for an industry right on the cusp of its next iteration.
So you’re ready to embrace this next era of ediscovery and you’ve decided to adopt a SaaS, self-service tool within your firm? In my previous blog, I outlined three top reasons why SaaS makes the most sense for law firms in the age of cloud storage, especially as new and improved self-service tools incorporate the latest technology, are easy to use, and have significantly improved the efficiency of the typically arduous and expensive on-prem ediscovery process.
But transitioning even some of your firm’s in-house ediscovery process to a SaaS solution requires careful thought around the complexities involved with security, solution support, and business continuity. To make the transition to SaaS as smooth as possible, it’s important to tailor your solution to your specific environment and create an implementation plan that will set you up for success. Here are a few suggestions for best practices to consider when you’re ready to embrace the self-service, SaaS ediscovery revolution and leave your cumbersome on-prem environment behind.
- Eliminate your on-prem applications and infrastructure. Many firms have a patchwork of on-prem tools that they use for different phases of their ediscovery workflow. A great starting point to eradicating the expense, headache, and risk that comes with maintaining your own infrastructure is to get rid of those old on-prem applications altogether and start fresh with a SaaS tool that will handle your entire workflow. That means choosing one comprehensive tool that allows you to create, upload, and process matters while also enabling you to manage your users across matters and locations from a single place. You’ll not only eliminate administrative headaches, you’ll no longer have to worry about managing data and will be free to concentrate on analyzing data while your SaaS solution provider takes on the security and infrastructure management for you.
- Leverage best-of-breed tools. A common problem for consumers of on-prem ediscovery software has been needing to pull together multiple technologies to process, review, perform analytics, and produce data. While you’ve been working with that complicated patchwork of tools you’ve licensed and tried to maintain within your own IT environment, new versions of best-of-breed tools have evolved for everything from processing to analytics to review and production. Now that you’ve chosen one SaaS tool that can handle your full ediscovery workflow, your new tool should provide you with access to the most updated and advanced tools across the EDRM without any maintenance or upgrades ever needing to be managed on your end.
- Ensure your solution is supported. Once you’re on board with a streamlined ediscovery workflow with no infrastructure risks or administrative headaches and access to the most modern and best available ediscovery tools, what happens when a matter becomes too large or unwieldy or you simply need access to a more traditional full-service support model? In this case, make sure you’re set up with a SaaS tool that is supported by a solution provider who can easily transition you from that self-service, on-demand ediscovery model to one where they can take over when you need them to. In addition, speed to implementation is something to consider. While on-prem systems can take months to actually install and implement, a self-service, SaaS tool can literally be up and ready to use within days.
Now that you’ve made the smart decision to modernize your ediscovery program and implement a self-service, SaaS solution, it’s time to use these best practices to eliminate your expensive and risky infrastructure, streamline your workflow, adopt the most advanced best-in-breed tools, and benefit from a self-service tool that’s also backed with the peace of mind of full support from your solution provider. If you have further thoughts on self-service, on-demand, SaaS ediscovery platforms, please reach out to me at SLedgerwood@lighthouseglobal.com or Twitter @sarahewood. I’d love to hear about your SaaS experience!
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