E-Discovery Providers Don't Get Cut Any Slack with Collaboration Software Updates

To paraphrase the great Ferris Bueller: Communications platforms move pretty fast—if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss something. It's not terrible advice for e-discovery providers who are regularly tasked with helping clients preserve data from rapidly evolving communications platforms such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.

But staying on top of the updates those channels are continuously making to their own  framework requires the purveyors of e-discovery services to look around a little bit more often than "once in a while." In fact, providers may have to stay in near constant contact with their counterparts in the communication technology world as well as make some key decisions about where they want to focus their energies. It helps that corporate America is sending them a strong hint.

"We're doing Slack really well. We're focusing to make sure that we're handling that specific application really well but also making sure that we're understanding this new world of collaboration software," said Brad Harris, vice president of product at Hanzo.

That's probably not a bad instinct given the proliferation of those kinds of platforms inside businesses. Scott Bailey, director of client solutions at the e-discovery provider Prosearch, noted that Microsoft Teams took off rapidly when they introduced the tool within their own company walls. Other organizations are likely to do the same—without considering the e-discovery implications first.

"Their IT teams will release [Microsoft Teams] without fully understanding how it's going to explode," Bailey said.

Some companies are attempting to deal with the inevitable e-discovery collection to follow by developing their own tools internally, but that may be changing. Harris at Hanzo pointed out that the investment of time and resources required to update those tools is substantial, which could be driving more business towards external tools, and likewise, outside e-discovery providers.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that keeping pace with communications channels is any less of a challenge. E-discovery tech providers, for instance, need their platforms to be flexible enough to be constantly updated or changed, which Harris said is easier to do than it was 10 years ago thanks to advancements in software. Still, it's hard to be responsive if you don't know what needs changing in the first place.

"We have a shared [communications] channel between Hanzo and Slack where our development team, our product team, we're always chatting routinely with their partner team," Harris said.

But while Slack may be willing to dialogue with e-discovery providers, communications platforms still have their own set of business priorities. Julia Hasenzahl, CEO of Prosearch, said that while Slack has taken steps to anticipate changes that could raise collection issues, they certainly aren't going to delay the release of a product just to give people on the discovery side of the fence time to catch up.

Beyond the time constraints, there can also be varying perspectives on what is going to become vital to the e-discovery process. For example, Microsoft will occasionally offer Prosearch a preview of a new feature that's rolling out with an emphasis on some of the big ticket items or changes involved.

"But [there are] a lot of these little things that they don't consider significant, but unfortunately they might have pretty significant downstream effects from an e-discovery standpoint," said Bailey.