Digital Reef Releases 'Portable E-Discovery' Package

E-discovery and information governance are two subsets of data storage that are fast climbing the charts in importance to enterprises. Why? Because keeping track of all that fast-multiplying data for legal and regulatory reasons gains more importance daily as everything pours in and piles up.

Upstart Digital Reef makes products for both of these hot categories. The Boxborough, Mass.-based company, which produces what it calls "massively scalable" e-discovery and digital information governance software, has released a new version that it claims simplifies identifying, analyzing, collecting and reviewing electronic documents within an enterprise. We're talking about e-mail, photos, video, audio files, data logs--everything digital connected with the business.

Old-school-type legal investigations involve legal aides and/or company employees physically searching through paper and digital storage and archives to identify e-mails or other files as possible evidence in litigation. That, of course, means per-hour employees spending hours or days doing the drudge work of filtering files for inclusion as evidence into a case. How effective all that boring file-shuffling is can always raise questions.

DR's new Portable Collections enables users to create large-as-necessary, case-specific data packages that can be quickly and easily distributed to legal service providers, enterprises and law firms. This gives immediate and direct access to help the entire legal team determine the potential relevancy of electronic documents, and develop litigation strategies earlier in the case assessment process without needing to make costly investments in technology or manpower.

E-discovery search can be used for keywords, names, dates, phrases, data custodians and several other criteria.

New features in DR's latest version include interactive reports (allows users to explore large volumes of data within one click); enhanced export options (provides configurable export properties for users to customize production artifacts to fit workflows); and an automated custodian generator (creates a custodian entry and assigns all documents with named sub-directories).

Using this software, enterprises can partner with legal service providers to establish proactive early case assessments -- called ECAs -- and establish risk strategies. Law firms benefit by having review-ready collections that save time. Because the software operates behind an enterprise firewall, it makes the entire process much easier to deploy since it does not require data to be copied or moved.

Need to look at e-discovery and information governance vendors? Here's one to add to the list.