Leading E-Discovery and Digital Forensics Industry Veteran Terry Tao Joins ALC Legal Technologies

Leading E-Discovery and Digital Forensics Industry Veteran
Terry Tao Joins ALC Legal Technologies

Appointment of industry veteran solidifies firm’s expertise in the practices of computer forensics, electronically stored information discovery, document production and management

Seattle, WA – September 2, 2008 – ALC Legal Technologies (ALC) announced today that leading E-Discovery and Digital Forensics industry veteran Terry Tao joined the firm as its new Director of Electronically Stored Information. Highly experienced in the E-Discovery and Digital Forensics areas, Terry comes to ALC with more than 10 years of experience in litigation data management and trial support technology systems. He specializes in the practices of computer forensics, electronically stored information discovery, document production, and trial technologies.

“We are excited to have a professional of Terry’s caliber and proficiency join ALC,” said Stefan Wikstrom, Founder and CEO of ALC Legal Technologies. “His addition is a valuable step in our evolution as we continue to build upon our considerable expertise and success to serve an ever-growing market requiring unique knowledge in e-discovery and digital forensics.”
In addition to performing computer forensics by analyzing drives for deleted information and other activities, Tao coordinates the gathering, searching, and processing of e-mail and electronically stored data. He has designed and trained legal teams on the use of online web-enabled data review applications. With his diverse technology background, Terry has designed and managed the architecture and methodology of numerous complex litigation cases in almost every facet of the process from initial concept and strategy to implementation.

Tao frequently consults with major corporations and law firms on a wide range of technical matters including data gathering, electronic discovery, and forensic data recovery. Terry graduated from Washington State University with a B.S. in Computer Science.

About ALC Legal Technologies
ALC Legal Technologies is an industry leading document and data services company providing innovative software solutions, state-of-the-art hardware technologies, and highly experienced personnel to deliver top quality and consistent results to the legal and corporate communities. The company provides products and services across several disciplines; including Consulting & Project Management, Electronic Discovery, Repository/Hosting, Imaging, and Traditional Reprographics.

ALC supports clients throughout the US and internationally, through its six offices – Seattle, San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Diego, Phoenix and Austin.

Media Contact:
David R. Kaufer
Director of Marketing
206.521.8717
david@alcweb.com

ALC Legal Technologies Named Top 20 Electronic Discovery Service Providers in the prestigious 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey Report

ALC Legal Technologies Named Top 20 Electronic Discovery Service Providers in the prestigious 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey Report

Ranking validates ALC’s reputation as top
electronic discovery service provider to the legal industry

Seattle, WA – August 5, 2008 – ALC Legal Technologies (ALC) announced today that it has been named one of the top 20 electronic service providers to the legal industry in the prestigious Socha-Gelbmann Survey Report. The 2008 Survey examines the state of electronic discovery in 2007, compares this year's results with results from the preceding five years, and makes projections for 2008 through 2009.

This marks the first time ALC has been included and ranked in this survey, which is used by law firms, corporate counsel, and executives to help drive purchase decisions when searching for the best firms to manage litigation support services. ALC earned its ranking as one of the top 20 Electronic Discovery Service providers in the Corporate Rankings category. This category includes the assessment from actual clients that use ALC.

“We are honored to be ranked so highly in our first year in the survey,” said Stefan Wikstrom, Founder and CEO of ALC Legal Technologies. “This provides us an opportunity to showcase what our clients have known about our firm for the past 12 years – ALC Legal Technologies is committed to providing world-class service and settles for nothing less than total satisfaction with our clients. We anticipate moving up the rankings in coming years.”

“This is an impressive showing for ALC Legal Technologies,” said George J. Socha, Jr., Esq., Founder Socha Consulting LLC. “They are one of the firms that are successfully making the transition from the old paper-only service world into the new era of electronic data services. We look forward to tracking their growth and progress in the future.”

The Annual Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey Report provides the most comprehensive view of the legal services industry, by carefully examining the state of electronic discovery; the rankings are based on a detailed evaluation of more than 350 qualitative and quantitative factors. The survey comprises data from more than 155 organizations on the forefront of e-discovery, including leading law firms and Fortune 1000 inside counsel.
About ALC Legal Technologies

ALC Legal Technologies is an industry leading document and data services company providing innovative software solutions, state-of-the-art hardware technologies, and highly experienced personnel to deliver top quality and consistent results to the legal and corporate communities. The company provides products and services across several disciplines; including Consulting & Project Management, Electronic Discovery, Repository/Hosting, Imaging, and Traditional Reprographics.

ALC supports clients throughout the US and internationally, through its six offices – Seattle, San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Diego, Phoenix and Austin.

Media Contact:
David R. Kaufer
Director of Marketing
206.521.8717
david@alcweb.com

When should you look at an e-discovery platform?

Good post here about how corporations can lean on partners to identify and implement the best and most appropriate solution when (not if) the need arises for e-discovery.

The writer discusses what he had to do when approached by corporate counsel to pull together documents relating to a specific subject (3 times in one year).

He writes:

Instead of pulling valuable resources off of projects, I relied on a local partner to come in and perform the searches for me. The first one cost $10k, the second about $22k and the third was close to $35k and I still had to pull people off of projects to help out. These lawsuits plus the various human resources issues that IT is asked to help perform discovery on (i.e. insider information or sexual harassment) started adding up and threatened to revert my proactive IT team back to a reacting group of firefighters. There had to be a better way.

The rest of the post can be found here...

Test your skills with new legal crossword

The Daily Report just launched a new online legal crossword puzzle. The site will post a new crossword puzzle every Friday. This is a fun way to test your legal (and crossword) skills and knowledge.

Companies don't know where their information lives - ediscovery drives costs up

From CMS Wire today.

It seems companies are confused (and becoming more so) about document storage and management and and this is having a profound impact on their e-discovery capabilities.

The article points to a study from the American College of Trial Lawyers and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.

Turns out, many companies are still not in the habit of retaining and organizing their documents in a logical structure. In fact, it’s so hard to uncover materials related to the legal cases that costs are rising as a result. Out of the 1,400 lawyers surveyed, 87% said that electronic discovery is too costly and driving up the price of litigation.

Companies who want to avoid these rising costs need to work with expert consultants and partners to develop best practice plans and processes.

A new e-Discovery worry to consider: Virtual Machines

From EnterpriseStorageForum.com comes an article about Virtual Machines and the impact they may have on e-discovery.

First things first. What are Virtual Machines? EnterpriseStorageForum.com defines them this way:

A self-contained operating environment that behaves as if it is a separate computer. For example, Java applets run in a Java virtual machine (VM) that has no access to the host operating system. This design has two advantages:
• System Independence: A Java application will run the same in any Java VM, regardless of the hardware and software underlying the system.
• Security: Because the VM has no contact with the operating system, there is little possibility of a Java program damaging other files or applications.
The second advantage, however, has a downside. Because programs running in a VM are separate from the operating system, they cannot take advantage of special operating system features.

Companies such as Kazeon Systems are offering solutions for the problem. In Kazeon's case, they claim support for VMware (NYSE: VMW) in its Information Server product line. Version 3.1 of the software supports VMware instances and VMware images so users can discover unknown or hidden virtual instances on servers, laptops and desktops.

Taneja Group founder and consulting analyst Arun Taneja noted that the rise of server virtualization has led to more and more information being stored in virtual machines.

"Traditional e-discovery products and methods have not evolved sufficiently and can potentially miss out on important, relevant and incomplete information associated with a legal matter that is contained in unknown or deliberately hidden virtual environments," Taneja said.

The bottom line? While not as obvious as email, text and instant messages, this is yet another area that law firms and corporate counsel alike need to consider when developing and implementing their e-discovery plans and processes.