The TASA Group Partner Creates Legal Support Partners for e-Discovery Accessibility

BLUE BELL, Pa., June 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the greatest lessons Shawn Huston learned from his mom inspired him to create Legal Support Partners (LSP), an e-Discovery company offering the latest and most accessible technology solutions. With the partnership, Shawn's passion comes in the form of assisting firms and corporations to leverage e-Discovery technology to assist in the delivery of legal services, and hopefully, a more rapid resolution to what is usually a difficult situation. Helping people includes reaching out to attorneys, paralegals and technologists to show the benefit of the services TASA and LSP provide. Many times though, the difficulty is to convince folks to use proper e-Discovery technology or practices. Change can be threatening, especially when what one has done for decades has seemingly worked fine. Unfortunately, the ABA (American Bar Association) disagrees with this mindset.

The ABA revised the comments for Model Rule 1.1 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct regarding competence to include the line, "To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology" (emphasis added). Therefore, legal professionals are going to have to start addressing technology as it relates to the practice of law and to provide an even better level of service to their clients.

Having at least a basic understanding of technology - in a world where the majority of communication is captured in electronic form - is critical to providing the level of guidance necessary in any modern litigation. Along the same lines, the use of software technology to increase quality while reducing time spent on things like searching for documents in a collection of data, is critical to the cost-effective and expeditious resolution clients expect. The efficiency and quality improvements, alongside an understanding of how data is created and stored in the course of business, can potentially lead to a stronger position that can leverage a client's interest.

One of the most common reasons Shawn hears for ignoring the use of e-Discovery technology is that the cost is too high; however, the cost of the technology in this area has come down dramatically in recent years. That is not to say that there aren't e-Discovery service providers still charging exorbitant rates, but TASA and LSP have found ways to leverage modern software and hardware to greatly reduce the expense historically associated with managing Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

Moore's Law is one reason that costs should, and have, come down. This theory, created by the founder of Intel Corporation, Gordon E. Moore, purports that computing power speeds will double every two years. More speed translates to more computing power, which means more can be done in less time. Along the same lines, storage capacity continues to rise while the cost per gigabyte of raw storage has dropped dramatically. It wasn't long ago that a 512MB flash drive was thought to be more storage than one could conceive of needing for documents.

For these reasons, and due to exponentially better e-Discovery software, the processing cost for a single gigabyte of raw ESI has come down from over $2,500 per GB ten years ago, to under $200 per GB today.

When it comes down to it, the important factor is making sure the consumer of e-Discovery technology services is informed and aware of needs and options. Online research and personal recommendations can ensure that clients get exactly what they are paying for, and more.

To learn more, visit http://www.tasanet.com/tasa-lsp.aspx

About The TASA Group

Established in 1956, The TASA Group (http://www.TASAnet.com) connects clients with a variety of quality experts in 11,000+ diverse expertise categories.  TASA refers local, national, and global experts for plaintiff or defense, targeting the expert credentials, location, experience and timeframe attorneys require.  Register at TASA's Knowledge Center to receive webinar invitations, expert articles, newsletters and updates.

SOURCE The TASA Group