48% of LegalTech^® NY 2007 Attendees Say Their Law Firms Manage E-Discovery Data with a Combination of In-House and Outsourced Services

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The most common law firm preference for managing client e-discovery data is through a combination of in-house software and outsourced processing services, according to an instant survey of law firm attorneys, litigation support specialists and e-discovery specialists conducted yesterday by LexisNexis^® Discovery Services during the opening sessions of LegalTech New York 2007, the largest legal technology event of the year.

“The survey results support our belief that the best option is to offer attorneys a variety of choices and flexibility from a single, reliable source to help them address changing firm and client needs for e-discovery.”

Forty eight percent of the survey participants reported their firms prefer the combined approach. The second most popular choice, expressed by 28 percent of those surveyed, was to manage e-discovery data with in-house software. Fourteen percent of the respondents said that they preferred outsourcing e-discovery data management to a vendor and 10 percent said they did not know.

Survey results underscore the premise for the LexisNexis^® launch of the new Discovery Services organization within its Litigation Services division to offer litigators at law firms and corporate counsel a diversity of choices and flexibility for their varying e-discovery needs.

“Today’s law firms have differing needs for e-discovery based on a number of variables such as firm resources, client needs, case size, cost, time sensitivity and others,” said Scott Nagel, vice president and managing director for LexisNexis Discovery Services. “The survey results support our belief that the best option is to offer attorneys a variety of choices and flexibility from a single, reliable source to help them address changing firm and client needs for e-discovery.”

Comprised of market leading products to meet high demand capabilities such as Concordance^™ for in-house management, Applied Discovery^® for outsourced projects and – coming this year – Hosted FYI^™ for a combination of in-house management and outsourced hosting, LexisNexis Discovery Services also includes market leading document retention and litigation preparedness consultants and digital forensics capabilities. These services are available individually, in combination or via LexisNexis^® Total Litigator – a single online destination providing litigators a complete and integrated set of tools and services to help them manage cases effectively through each step of the litigation lifecycle.

This specific approach with discovery is also a concrete example of the broader LexisNexis Total Practice Solutions strategy of helping litigators win by providing them the most comprehensive set of tools and services to help them successfully manage cases at each step of the litigation process.

Reasons for Preference

The LexisNexis^® survey also found that 41 percent of respondents choose their preferred approach for managing client e-discovery data because it is more cost effective, the most popular reason given. Twenty three percent reported they were most influenced by the approach that would deliver more control to the e-discovery process. Twenty-one percent said it was because of timely processing and nine percent cited better data security as their biggest consideration. Six percent responded they did not know.

When LexisNexis polled LegalTech attendees regarding the most important attributes of e-discovery services used by their law firms, 36 percent chose easy-to-use, 31 percent selected choice, 19 percent identified a large capacity of for e-discovery data and 14 percent said they did not know.

“Clearly cost efficiency and choice are very important factors to firms when it comes to choosing an e-discovery service or software,” said Nagel. “We believe LexisNexis Discovery Services is in the best position to offer litigators these benefits and others based on our unique and diverse portfolio of e-discovery products and services.”

About the Survey

LexisNexis conducted its survey of 176 verified law firm attorneys, litigation support managers and e-discovery specialists on January 29, 2007, at LegalTech 2007 in New York City. Survey participants, who came from diverse geographic and industry backgrounds, were randomly selected and participated in the five-question survey that asked them to gauge their firm’s policy on how they handle their clients’ e-discovery requirements.

About LexisNexis

LexisNexis^® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis^® and Nexis^® research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 13,000 employees worldwide.