Ediscovery: It’s the perfect storm of “legalese” meets “techno-babble,” causing otherwise intelligent professionals to perpetuate some of the least helpful jargon known to humankind.
With so many twisted creations to choose from, we asked these four legal tech influencers about the word or phrase they’d most like to bury in 2016.
Q: Which terrible legal tech buzzword will finally and mercifully die in 2016, and why?
Chris Dale
Founder/eDisclosure Consultant
The eDisclosure Information Project
“Kimono”—as in “don’t open the kimono.” It seems to be an alternative way of saying “don’t cooperate with your opponent, whatever the Rules say,” and should be banned not only on that ground but also because it conjures the image of an eDiscovery lawyer of either gender prancing around in a dangerously revealing dressing gown and threatening to show us more. There are only a handful who might look good doing that.
Follow on Twitter: @chrisdaleoxford
Craig Ball
Attorney, Forensic Technologist and Owner
Craig D. Ball PC
“Personal digital assistant (PDA).” They’ve been entirely displaced by smartphones. Not that obsolescence matters, considering most lawyers still seek “telegrams” in their requests for production.
Follow on Twitter: @craigball
Chelsey Lambert
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Smokeball
“The cloud.” I hope for the sake of everyone reading this that we all know what the internet is. A glorious land of infinite possibility that also stores and houses our data.
Our phones map out our day, and social networks share special moments. Software helps us run our businesses, or is our business. So can we please stop saying that our email or invoices are “in the cloud?” Instead, tell customers they are welcome to pay you… online.
Follow on Twitter: @ChelseyLambert
Rakesh Madhava
Chief Executive Officer
Nextpoint
“Processing.” Image generation, extraction, de-duplication, and a lot of the techno-babble about getting ESI into a reviewable format originate here. The term itself has no practical meaning. Saying processing is a step in eDiscovery is like saying electricity is a step in computing.
In a marketplace where its difficult for buyers to compare apples to apples, processing adds a lot of unnecessary complexity. Lawyers don’t care about this, and they shouldn’t.
Follow on Twitter: @rakeshmad
How do you know which words really matter in eDiscovery?
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