Not surprisingly, today’s rapidly growing eDiscovery software market has become significant enough to catch the attention of mainstream analysts like Gartner. This is good news for company lawyers who are used to delegating enterprise software decisions to IT departments and outside law firms. Because today those same company lawyers are involved in eDiscovery and other information management software purchasing decisions for their organizations. While these lawyers understand the company’s legal requirements, they do not necessarily understand how to choose the best technology to address those requirements. Conversely, IT representatives understand enterprise software, but they do not necessarily understand the law. Gartner bridges this information gap by providing in depth and independent analysis of the top eDiscovery software solutions in the form of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for e-Discovery Software.

Gartner’s methodology for preparing the annual Magic Quadrant report is rigorous. Providers must meet quantitative requirements such as revenue and significant market penetration to be included in the report. If these threshold requirements are met then Gartner probes deeper by meeting with company representatives, interviewing customers, and soliciting feedback to written questions. Providers that make the cut are evaluated across four Magic Quadrant categories as either “leaders, challengers, niche players, or visionaries.” Where each provider ends up on the quadrant is guided by an independent evaluation of each provider’s “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision.” Landing in the “leaders” quadrant is considered a top recognition.

The nine Leaders in this year’s Magic Quadrant have four primary characteristics (See figure 1 above).

The first is whether the provider has functionality that spans both sides of the electronic discovery reference model (EDRM) (left side – identification, preservation, litigation hold, collection, early case assessment (ECA) and processing and right-side – processing, review, analysis and production). “While Gartner recognizes that not all enterprises — or even the majority — will want to perform legal-review work in-house, more and more are dictating what review tools will be used by their outside counsel or legal-service providers. As practitioners become more sophisticated, they are demanding that data change hands as little as possible, to reduce cost and risk. This is a continuation of a trend we saw developing last year, and it has grown again in importance, as evidenced both by inquiries from Gartner clients and reports from vendors about the priorities of current and prospective customers.”

We see this as consistent with the theme that providers with archiving solutions designed to automate data retention and destruction policies generally fared better than those without archiving technology. The rationale is that part of a good end-to-end eDiscovery strategy includes proactively deleting data organizations do not have a legal or business need to keep. This approach decreases the amount of downstream electronically stored information (ESI) organizations must review on a case-by-case basis so the cost savings can be significant.

Not surprisingly, whether or not a provider offers technology assisted review or predictive coding capabilities was another factor in evaluating each provider’s end-to-end functionality. The industry has witnessed a surge in predictive coding case law since 2012 and judicial interest has helped drive this momentum. However, a key driver for implementing predictive coding technology is the ability to reduce the amount of ESI attorneys need to review on a case-by-case basis. Given the fact that attorney review is the most expensive phase of the eDiscovery process, many organizations are complementing their proactive information reduction (archiving) strategy with a case-by-case information reduction plan that also includes predictive coding.

The second characteristic Gartner considered was that Leaders’ business models clearly demonstrate that their focus is software development and sales, as opposed to the provision of services. Gartner acknowledged that the eDiscovery services market is strong, but explains that the purpose of the Magic Quadrant is to evaluate software, not services. The justification is that “[c]orporate buyers and even law firms are trending towards taking as much e-Discovery process in house as they can, for risk management and cost control reasons. In addition, the vendor landscape for services in this area is consolidating. A strong software offering, which can be exploited for growth and especially profitability, is what Gartner looked for and evaluated.”

Third, Gartner believes the solution provider market is shrinking and that corporations are becoming more involved in buying decisions instead of deferring technology decisions to their outside law firms. Therefore, those in the Leaders category were expected to illustrate a good mix of corporate and law firm buying centers. The rationale behind this category is that law firms often help influence corporate buying decisions so both are important players in the buying cycle. However, Gartner also highlighted that vendors who get the majority of their revenues from the “legal solution provider channel” or directly from “law firms” may soon face problems.

The final characteristic Gartner considered for the Leaders quadrant is related to financial performance and growth. In measuring this component, Gartner explained that a number of factors were considered. Primary among them is whether the Leaders are keeping pace with or even exceeding overall market growth. (See “Forecast:  Enterprise E-Discovery Software, Worldwide, 2012 – 2017,” Tom Eid, December, 2012).

Companies landing in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for eDiscovery Software have reason to celebrate their position in an increasingly competitive market. To review Gartner’s full report yourself, click here. In the meantime, please feel free to share your own comments below as the industry anxiously awaits next year’s Magic Quadrant Report.

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