Lawyers cite Electronically Stored Information as cause for lost cases - Survey Results

A recent survey focusing on the important role of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) in the legal process highlighted that while ESI has become a crucial part of the legal process, it has caused lawyers numerous problems over the past two years.

A staggering 100% of the 5000 lawyers questioned across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), stated that poor availability of relevant ESI led them to losing a case, delaying a case or being sanctioned by the courts of regulators.

According to the South African lawyers polled, 72% found ESI to be a critical part of their daily legal matters. More than half have experienced significant growth (25 - 50%) in the amount of legally relevant electronically stored information in the past 5 years. The information most commonly searched for by South African lawyers consists of e-mails, word processing documents, databases and the content of individual hard drives.

The survey also shows a disconnect between lawyers' perceived readiness and their actual ability to respond to the challenges ESI presents. 69% of respondents claim to possess the right skills and resources to process 'digital evidence' effectively. 60%, however, still said they struggle with the volumes of legal matter related information that needs to be stored electronically.

"The challenge of dealing with electronically stored information in legal matters has become a mainstream concern," said Tyrone Theodoris, systems engineer manager, Symantec Africa, "The results of this survey illustrate that accessing and managing electronic information effectively is a growing challenge for legal personnel. The single factor most likely to make their lives easier was search technology that effectively identifies, preserves and processes electronic information."

More than half (57%) of respondents believe that technology is the answer to their problems, rather than changes to legislation or greater standardisation of the formats used to store information.

Read about a Tech4Law discussion on this topic with industry gurus Paul Jacobson and Tyrone Theodorides.

Research background

Scope of survey: 5,000 lawyers and legal professionals polled across ten territories in EMEA.

500 respondents in each country: UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and United Arab Emirates

This survey was commissioned to establish: -
The importance of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) to the legal process across EMEA
EMEA legal professionals readiness for processing Electronically Stored Information that must be used in legal matters
Whether problems with the storage, processing and recall of Electronically Stored information regularly impacts legal action across EMEA

Symantec Enterprise Vault Positioned as a Leader in the Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant and Receives Strong Positive Rating in Vendor Rating

SOUTH AFRICA, Johannesburg - Dec. 2, 2010 - Symantec Corp. today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) report.(1)  In addition, Symantec received an overall positive rating from Gartner and its Enterprise Vault received a Strong Positive in a recent vendor report.(2) Symantec Enterprise Vault, which has been adopted by more than 15,000 organisations globally, helps customers store, manage and discover unstructured information across multiple content sources with a single solution. As the industry's most widely-deployed archiving solution, Enterprise Vault enables organisations to protect their information completely, deduplicate to reduce costs, delete information confidently and discover information efficiently.

"Enterprises are experiencing rapid growth of user data (stored on file shares), Microsoft SharePoint and other unstructured content. Much of this content is infrequently accessed after a period of time. Enterprises are looking for products that can deliver policy-based retention management and disposition, as well as legal hold and early case assessment, in a cost-effective way," notes the Magic Quadrant report, which positions vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. "At this point, many vendors that offer e-mail archiving have added support for file archiving and SharePoint archiving. Leading vendors are taking this expanded information-archiving approach a step further - they are increasingly adding support for instant messages, text messages, social networking content and, in some cases, even structured application data."

"Symantec Enterprise Vault enables organisations to archive data for long term storage, set policies to classify and automatically delete information and simplify legal holds," said Tyrone Theodorides, System Engineering Manager for Africa, Symantec. "Enterprise Vault provides efficient storage of information so emails and documents coming from multiple content sources, such as Exchange, SharePoint and file shares, are only stored once. Enterprise Vault 9 adds new capabilities that allows customers to search for data beyond the archive stores to further streamline the e-Discovery process, save time and reduce costs."

According to Gartner, approximately 70 percent of data is duplicate, and hasn't been accessed in over 90 days. (3) Enterprise Vault 9.0 helps mitigate this effect by archiving from sources where information can accumulate such as email, file servers and SharePoint. Doing so can dramatically reduce storage costs, improve backup times and streamline the e-Discovery process. Gartner research also shows that a well-deployed archiving strategy can save up to 60 percent in backup costs and reduce your backup times by up to 80 percent. In addition, Gartner research shows that through 2012, companies without an information governance strategy and technology for content archiving solutions will spend one-third more on e-Discovery than those with content archiving solutions.(4)

Enterprise Vault provides easy compliance and e-Discovery searches by combining emails from Microsoft Exchange Online with on-premise archived content sources into a central repository, allowing organisations to centrally manage e-Discovery and support internal investigations. Enterprise Vault expands content source support to include Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Domino 8.5.1.

Click to Tweet: Symantec Positioned as a Leader in the Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant: http://bit.ly/aQPbPQ

Resources
(1) - Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving” by Sheila Childs, Kenneth Chin, October 29, 2010.
(2) - Gartner, “Vendor Rating: Symantec,” October 1, 2010.
(3) - Source: Sheila Childs, Gartner Presentation: Top 10 Strategies for Surviving Unconstrained Data Growth
(4) - Source: Debra Logan, E-Discovery Software and Service Providers: Choosing for Your Case and Your, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010, October 2010

Additional Resources
The Gartner Enterprise Information Archiving Magic Quadrant (PDF)
Symantec Enterprise Vault
Symantec 2010 Information Management Survey
Symantec Eases Customers' Fears of Deleting Business Information
Connect with Enterprise Vault on Twitter

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, archiving, backup & recovery solutions.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Vendor Rating Disclaimer
The Vendor Rating is copyrighted October 1, 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Vendor Rating is an evaluation of a vendor as a whole and is based on Gartner's assessment of the vendor's vision and execution for a product or service, relative to Gartner's analysis of clients' requirements. It is not intended as a comparison relative to competitors in the market. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Vendor Rating, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.