Paralegals Help with “Do-It-Yourself E-Discovery”?

It’s all about making EDD accessible to small firms & solo practitioners where paralegal tech skills can come in handy:

"Recently, a Texas firm received a dozen Microsoft Outlook .pst files from a client. Like the dog that caught the car, they weren’t sure what to do next. Even out on the prairie, they’d heard of online hosting and e-mail analytics, but worried about the cost. They wondered: Did they really need an e-discovery vendor? Couldn’t they just do it themselves?

[snip]

"Most evidence today is electronic, so curtailing discovery of electronic evidence isn’t an option, and trying to stick with paper is a dead end. We’ve got to deal with electronic evidence in small cases, too. Sometimes, that means doing it yourself.

"The Texas lawyers sought a way to access and search the Outlook e-mail and attachments in the .pst files. It had to be quick and easy. It had to protect the integrity of the evidence. And it had to be cheap. They wanted what many lawyers will come to see they need: the tools and techniques to stay in touch with the evidence in smaller cases without working through vendors and experts."