Discovery historically has been a fundamental part of the litigation process. But because of the ongoing, tremendous increase in the number of electronic documents generated by organizations, it has largely moved away from manual searches to favor increasingly sophisticated types of electronic inquiries.

“Everything is electronic now,” explains Patrick Oot, an attorney at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and the co-founder of the Electronic Discovery Institute. “So little now is on paper in discovery.”

That poses some challenges for both larger companies, which are holding a huge number of electronic documents, and smaller organizations, which may not have the resources to respond efficiently to extensive requests for data.