Press release: Industry Leaders to Discuss How New Standard Will Improve Interoperability and Data Transfer throughout Discovery Process

St. Paul, MN (December 3, 2007) – The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (“EDRM”), an industry group created to develop and establish practical guidelines and standards for electronic discovery, today launches its Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard, now available for download at the EDRM Website (www.edrm.net). The standard allows for the easy transfer of electronically stored information (ESI) to and from applications involved in different phases of the discovery process.

E-discovery vendors, consultants, law firms, in-house counsel or corporate IT departments that are interested in learning more about the XML standard are invited to an educational Web seminar presented by EDRM at noon CST on Friday, December 7th. The Web seminar will be hosted by EDRM founder George Socha and will feature a presentation from a member of the EDRM’s XML Project team, David Baskin of Recommind. To register for the Web seminar, please visit https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/655968366.

“The e-discovery industry’s reaction to our XML standard announcement has been incredibly positive, and we’ve received a great deal of interest on a range of issues including how to download and deploy the schema, as well as the validation process and available documentation,” said George Socha, co-founder of EDRM and president of Socha Consulting LLC. “The Web seminar will address these questions and provide the basic tools to become XML compliant.”

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.

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 am and is filed under EDRM XML 2, Press Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.