eClaris Announces New In-House Electronic Discovery Appliance

For corporations seeking to control costs and law firms conducting document-intense litigation, this is the future of eDiscovery.

Los Angeles, Calif. — March 3, 2009 — eClaris, Inc., today announced that this month the company will begin marketing an eDiscovery appliance businesses and law firms can lease or purchase to handle eDiscovery from their own servers, allowing for even more cost-effective eDiscovery in-house. The appliance is a processing engine that interrogates data – e-mail, disks, metadata, images and more – then indexes the results and provides for immediate search throughout the case life-cycle.  Clients will undoubtedly also benefit from the Unicode and Multi-Language Support the appliance provides.

This complete, end-to-end eDiscovery platform enables clients of eClaris to enhance their eDiscovery process to make it more intuitive and streamlined without sacrificing quality and security. Once the device is installed, the client chooses either a subscription or a “pay-per-click” model, depending on the client’s eDiscovery needs. Law firms have the option of using a method that bills their clients directly for time spent on their particular eDiscovery. For corporations seeking to control costs and law firms conducting document-intense litigation, this is the future of eDiscovery.

The appliance is designed to mitigate risk while supporting a balanced approach to eDiscovery processing with both client and vendor working together on a dedicated platform. Each appliance will be able to process up to 250 gigabytes of data in less than two hours. The system represents an all-in-one solution for evidence collection, processing, hosting and production. eClaris provides background support and is ready to supply additional levels of engagement on an as needed basis.

“The appliance is an important innovation for eDiscovery, making it more efficient, more affordable and more available for every business and law firm, no matter what size,” said Jacques Nack Ngue, president and founder of eClaris, Inc. “As discovery requests become more extensive, including all types of electronic message and storage devices, this cost-effective appliance will help level the litigation playing field involving document-intensive cases.”

For the past several years, eClaris has been on a quest to perfect eDiscovery. In 2008, the company added 115 servers, enabling eClaris to better serve its clients’ data processing needs by increasing the quantity of data processed while reducing overall project turn around time. Clients of eClaris can now also initiate, manage and track their eDiscovery efforts at all hours of the day by logging onto www.eclaris.com/ondemand.

About eClaris

eClaris is a dynamic eDiscovery consultancy and service provider dedicated to helping law firms and corporations classify, process and review® electronic data. eClaris combines superior legal expertise with the latest in scalable technology to provide clients with cost effective, accurate and accessible data in a timely fashion. For more information, visit www.eclaris.com or call 213.623.1620.

Safe Harbor

This news release contains forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, those that refer to eClaris’ future development plans or operating results. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated due to risk factors that include, but are not limited to, lack of timely development of products and services; lack of market acceptance of products, services and technologies; inadequate capital; adverse government regulations; competition; breach of contract; inability to earn revenue or profits; dependence on key individuals; dependence on outside parties for sales, customer support, and/or customer retention; inability to obtain or protect intellectual property rights; inability to obtain listing for the companies' securities; lower sales and higher operating costs than expected; technological obsolescence of the company's products; litigation; limited operating history and risks inherent in the eClaris’ markets and business.  The forward-looking statements in this press release represent eClaris’ current views as of the dates of individual pages, and eClaris may disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. 

Alfred W. Cortese, Jr. of Cortese PLLC, reminds us that the cost of eDisovery continues to make the legal system off limits for many litigants without access to deep pockets. See “Electronic Discovery Costs and Burdens Require New Rules,” The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel,” March 2009 http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=March&artYear=2009&EntryNo=9452. 

To deal with the cost, complexity and burden of eDiscovery, Cortese is proposing five model eDiscovery and waiver rules for incorporation into the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. “The five rules suggested here attempt to establish concise, clear, and unambiguous standards that will supply needed guidance to bench and bar in dealing with electronic information and privilege waiver issues arising in discovery,” writes Cortese. “They attempt to deal directly with the core problems in modern discovery and should reduce the ability of some litigants to leverage the cost and volume of that discovery to force settlements. They should also reduce unexpected and unnecessary discovery costs and burdens due to lack of planning, information, and management. Overall, the proposed rules should lead to faster, less expensive and better collection of data and should help to avoid expensive problems, prevent loss of data and ensure an efficient and sensible preservation, collection, review, and production process. 

Briefly, Cortese’s suggested rules advocate the following:

• Define “electronically stored information” in a way that tracks a similar definition in Federal Rule of Evidence 502;
• permit eDiscovery of reasonably accessible evidence as a matter of course, but require a court order based on a showing of good cause to mandate production from sources not reasonably accessible;
• provide sanctions for evidence lost as a result of routine operations only if the producing party recklessly or intentionally violated an order;
• allow for flexibility in the form of ESI production; and
• apply predictable, consistent standards to protect against waiver of attorney-client privilege or work-product information.

Cortese’s proposed rules make sense to us and, should they become law, would as he says “become a major step towards a more realistic approach to electronic discovery and significantly reduce the costs and burdens of such discovery.” 

If you agree with Cortese that eDiscovery has become too costly and burdensome, contact us today. We are experts at controlling both the expense and complexity of your eDiscovery requests. And you won’t need to wait for amendments to the model rules.

We are quickly becoming the recognized authority on the discovery of audio recordings, which are now fully discoverable courtesy of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(a). For a primer about why your company should pay attention to the archiving of audio recordings, follow this link to our recent article in Legal Tech Newsletter, “Listen Up and Discover Audio Recordings” http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202428560876. 

Let us know your issues surrounding audio and how we can help your firm “wade effectively through the previously uncharted ESI waters of audio eDiscovery.”