Growth Drivers in the ediscovery Consulting Market

The Digital Future: Why is the Demand for Ediscovery Consulting Services on the Rise?

Investigation agencies and lawsuit firms are highly reliant on conclusive evidences which are stored in the form of digital data. They acquire the services of ediscovery companies to assess, analyze, develop, and implement strategies to maximize the legal ROI. Such electronically stored information contains data including emails, presentations, voicemail, audio, documents, websites, video files, and social media. The benefit ediscovery solutions provide over traditional hardcopy evidence is that it contains metadata such as time-date stamps, file properties, and author and recipient information. The market for ediscovery consulting services is growing at an impressive CAGR of 15.6%. (SpendEdge Procurement Market Intelligence Report – Global E-discovery Consulting Services) The market for ediscovery services is on the rise due to frequent changes in laws pertaining to data sharing and data privacy.

Growth drivers in the ediscovery services market

Exponential rise in data volumes

The overall data volume is expected to grow tremendously in the near future due to increasing digitalization and new electronic information sources. Additionally, it has been estimated that corporate data will grow at a rate of 40%-60% each year by 2022. Such growth in corporate data can be attributed to data generated by IoT devices and personal assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. There’s been a radical shift in the use of electronic data as compared to human-generated data, resulting in the need for efficient e-discovery consultation efforts. For instance, in a 2015 murder investigation, content from an Alexa-integrated Amazon echo device formed a part of e-discovery.

Stringent laws and regulations

The instances of data breaches has been on the rise lately. In 2016, the average cost of data breach stood at US$3.5 million. As a result, several changes have been introduced in laws around data privacy and anti-bribery which increases the complexity of the compliance process. Companies can face considerable penalties in case of non-compliance. To abide by the compliance norms, companies need to have comprehensive structures and support in place. As a result, companies are banking on ediscovery consultants to ensure compliance with new laws.

Increased IT spending

Businesses are forced to spend millions of dollars in secure IT infrastructure to tackle the rising number of dispute cases and investigations. The political instability that surfaced with the Trump administration and Brexit have further complicated the legal landscape. Enterprises are reducing compliance and legal risks by relying on e-discovery solutions to manage data, avoid data breaches, reduce unnecessary documentation, and to design a secure repository for organization documents.

Mobile mediums and remote access

Increase in globalization and outsourcing activities has resulted in higher workforce mobility. Although workforce mobility benefits the organization positively, it increases the complexity of managing data storage and access. Additionally, employees across organizations prefer mobile mediums such as smartphones and tablets for their information needs. With organizations encouraging bring your own device (BYOD) culture and remote access, complexity in data management is a certainty. Such practices can increase the legal risks, which is why organizations are considering ediscovery software to manage and preserve such data and resulting risks. Ediscovery tools allow organizations to provide legitimate access to enterprise data on personal devices.

Read more about the growth drivers in the ediscovery consulting market along with key vendors, pricing models, procurement challenges, supply market insights, and cost-saving opportunities in SpendEdge’s upcoming report on the global e-discovery consulting services market.