The legal landscape is changing. While many of the practices adopted at the height of lockdown simply made the best of a bad situation, there has been an irreversible move towards greater flexibility across all sectors. Even in the legal space – which has historically been slower to adapt than other industries – there is compelling data to show that attitudes in workforces, from specialist firms to general counsel, have undergone a significant change.
Changing Attitudes in Legal:
According to research from Thomson Reuters published earlier this year – which surveyed close to 2,500 UK legal professionals – 63% of lawyers would prefer to work hours of their choosing, compared to just 22% who felt this way before 2020. The same report found that across all responses, those surveyed wanted to spend an average of 2.1 days per week working from home. Before lockdown measures were implemented, this average was around 0.5 days.
So it would appear that, against the odds, flexibility is here to stay for the legal sector. Or at least those that recognise the benefits it has to offer in terms of productivity, quality of work and employee wellbeing. But what does this mean for eDiscovery?
To achieve such flexibility while working on an eDiscovery project, having the right technology is vital. But the benefits of these technologies go much further than flexibility itself.
Read on to find out which technologies can make your eDiscovery operations faster, more flexible and farther-reaching than before.
Cloud eDiscovery for “Anytime, Anywhere” Flexibility:
Buzz phrases like “agile” or “flexible working" get thrown around to such a degree that it’s easy to forget what they actually mean in real terms.
At the most basic level, flexibility in eDiscovery means being able to conduct litigation processes as normal, without being tied to a particular place of work, specific in-house systems or facilities, and or rigid working hours. In short, it means the freedom to work at any time, from any location, on any device.
Cloud-based eDiscovery platforms like RelativityOne are already making these aspirations a working reality.
Cloud eDiscovery allows review teams to securely access case data from anywhere in the world. Altlaw provides highly prescribed work-from-home protocols for all people working on a case to ensure that people working on the case from home are not compromising security with their work environment or processes. This may include a checklist of do's and don'ts and a check of any hardware being used to ensure that appropriate threat detection software is installed and up to date. So long as the security criteria are met and the user has an internet connection, they can verify their identity and log into their eDiscovery portal from their device of choice – whether it’s a laptop, tablet or mobile phone, from their location of choice - home or office.
This can provide phenomenal benefits for teams, namely in the form of speeding up projects and opening up new efficiencies.
International teams can collaborate more seamlessly than ever before, and teams can overcome common operational roadblocks that hinder their progress. Need sign off from a senior member of counsel who is out of the office? Now they can quickly offer their opinion on that email of interest while on the move – no servers needed.