Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: Eyeing The Future: Proactive Total Information Governance®

Linda Sharp, Associate General Counsel, ZL Technologies Inc, USA

The current paradigm in eDiscovery revolves around the benefits of “predictive coding”, “automated document classification”, or any number of synonyms for this type of technology assisted review (TAR). This technology is hailed as the panacea for reducing the increasing costs in eDiscovery; however, under the current model, it is more of a palliative fix—at best. In reality, the veritable impetus behind these costs is the manner in which content is being managed and stored on a daily basis. But, before going into this, it is important to first discuss what type of data is being stored for that lays the grounds for the rest of the discussion. There are generally two forms of data storage: structured data and unstructured data.

Linda Sharp has responsibility for corporate legal matters and related legal product initiatives. Prior to joining ZL, Linda provided consulting services to Fortune 500 corporations and the nation’s largest law firms. She specialized in evaluating and negotiating viable, cost-effective strategies for handling electronic discovery matters. She has conducted training programs on electronic discovery for the NASD, the SEC and The Rutter Group. Linda is an expert in the e-discovery arena and speaks and writes regularly on the subject. She has been a member of the legal community since 1978 and has worked on some of the most important litigation and regulatory investigations in the industry. Linda is on the Advisory Board for OLP, is licensed to practice law in the State of California and holds a Masters in Business Administration.

ZL Technologies, founded in 1999, has proven itself as the specialized provider of electronic content archiving software for the most demanding large enterprise environments. The award-winning ZL Unified Archive® addresses E-Discovery, compliance, records management and storage optimization. Built upon the industry’s most scalable platform, ZL offers today’s leading organizations the ability to comprehensively manage the entirety of their digital assets. To accomplish this challenge, ZL engineered a number of complex technologies into one seamless solution in order to manage billions of documents from a consolidated point of control.