There’s an old adage “the great thing about standards are there are so many to choose from.” Similarly, it seems there are more than a few questions you should ask when selecting an e-discovery vendor.
Finding the Right Five Questions for EDD Vendors (Law Technology News, 6 Oct 2008) asks numerous EDD experts to answer the question “What are the five most important questions that any organization should ask of vendors before signing the contract?”
The range of suggested questions is staggering. Some overlap, especially if you abstract to a higher level, but I saw less commonality than I would have expected. Topics include pricing, vendor capabilities, capacity, references, project management approach, software features, resumes of key players, turnover among executives, and very specific tech questions.
My take-away is that selecting an EDD vendor cannot be reduced to five easy questions. The list of varied questions explains why EDD RFPs are often quite long. Given the complexity of e-discovery, I suppose this is not surprising. Were I novice though, I think I’d read this article and conclude that I need an expert to help me select a vendor.