EDRM Announces XML Standard for E-Discovery Industry
Press release: Developed by E-Discovery Industry Leaders, New Standard to Improve Interoperability and Data Transfer throughout Discovery Process
St. Paul, MN (Oct. 23, 2007) – The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (“EDRM”), an industry group created to develop and establish practical guidelines and standards for electronic discovery, today announced that it has developed an Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard for the easy transfer of electronically stored information (ESI) to and from applications involved in different phases of the discovery process. The new XML standard will help all e-discovery practitioners – whether vendors, consultants, law firms, in-house counsel or corporate IT departments – reduce the cost, time and manual work associated with e-discovery.
“In any discovery project, no matter the type of company or legal matter involved, data is stored, collected, reviewed and produced across multiple systems in a very costly and complex process,” said George Socha, co-founder of EDRM and president of Socha Consulting LLC. “The XML standard addresses a major pain point within e-discovery – moving and formatting the different types of data across all of these disparate systems – and is an important step towards streamlining the process.”
The XML standard was developed by the XML Project, an EDRM working group consisting of technologists and lawyers from the leading e-discovery vendors, service providers, law firms and corporate end-users. The standard consists of an XML Schema Definition (XSD) that will allow all parties to consistently describe documents, email, attachments and standalone files, as well as the underlying metadata for all of those objects as they move through the e-discovery process. The XML Project has created a validation tool to quickly and efficiently validate that files conform to the XML standard prior to importing the data. Additionally, the XML Project has developed an XML compliance process to help all parties determine whether products conform to the standard and interoperate properly.
In total, the new XML standard provides a number of benefits to users involved in all stages of the e-discovery process, including:
- Labor and cost reduction: IT departments, legal teams and service providers no longer have to spend valuable time and resources converting and transferring ESI from system to system
- Reduction in errors: Not only can organizations focus on proficiency in a single standard schema as opposed to an infinite number of disparate formats, but the validation tool detects non-conforming load files earlier in the process
- Faster e-discovery process: Data can be transferred from system to system more quickly, ultimately leading to a faster overall process
- Scalability: The ability to adapt to future technological advances as well as new metadata constructs
“From the beginning, EDRM has focused on developing standards and providing thought leadership to a new and very complicated market,” said Tom Gelbmann, co-founder of EDRM and president of Gelbmann & Associates. “We’re confident that as the XML standard is adopted by the industry over the coming months, this will set the stage for greater efficiencies within e-discovery.”
Launched in May 2005, the EDRM Project was created to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market – a problem identified in the 2003 and 2004 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery surveys as a major concern for vendors and consumers alike. The completed reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic discovery products and services. Expanding on the base defined with the Reference Model, the EDRM projects were expanded in May 2006 to include the EDRM Metrics and the EDRM XML projects. Over the past three years, the EDRM project has comprised more than 118 organizations, including 72 service and software providers, 34 law firms, three industry groups and nine corporations involved with e-discovery.
About EDRM
The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project was launched in 2005 to address the lack of standards and guidelines in the electronic discovery market. The completed reference model provides a common, flexible and extensible framework for the development, selection, evaluation and use of electronic discovery products and services. Information about EDRM is available at http://www.edrm.net.
