Perhaps Wal-Mart Stores Inc. senior associate general counsel Aaron Crews is an in-house yogi. When pressed on his e-discovery approach and whether he favors insourcing, outsourcing or contracting to a third party, Crews said he keeps things flexible, according to Daryn Teague in LexisNexis' Business of Law blog.

“We always want to remain flexible enough to make sure we're applying the right model to the right need,” said Crews. “You can't get stuck with a single prism through which you view all insource/outsource decisions in e-discovery.” His team at Walmart uses a diverse approach, with in-house resources dedicated to early case assessment work and more complex matters assigned to the appropriate service providers.

For Crews, getting the most out of his outside counsel is important, and that doesn't always mean using them to comb through evidence and filter thousands of documents. “I believe the highest and best use of our outside counsel is to rely on them for their core skills, things like legal judgment, business counsel, risk assessment and litigation strategy,” he tells Teague.