Organizations many times seek to expand their business beyond what they can achieve with their organic resources by entering into partnerships with providers that deliver the promise of access to new technologies, new markets, and new customers. However, as promising as partner relationships may be, they may also have an unfortunate downside as they may leave an organization in a worse business position if the promise of the potential partnership is unrealized.
A risk is a chance you take that if it does not work out, you can recover. A gamble is a chance you take that if it does not work out, you cannot recover. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel1
Want to avoid gambling the success of your business on a partnership? Then ask these questions before any agreement or renewal of an agreement and let the answers inform your decision to partner or not to partner.
If you cannot answer yes and feel comfortable with the actual answer to each of these subjective questions, you may want to investigate the responses further as they may indicate the potential for problems at some point in a partnership.
If you answered yes to any of these objective questions, it is probably a good idea to investigate the reason for the yes answer further as a yes answer may indicate potential partnership issues.
These subjective and objective questions are certainly not the only ones2 that should be asked of potential providers before you consider partnership agreements. However, if these questions are asked up front, they may serve to uncover areas of concern that are better addressed before instead of after agreements have been signed.
If at any point before, during, or after an agreement you begin to have doubt about a partnership, it is probably prudent to address the reason for that doubt directly and immediately with the partner. If you still have doubt after that conversation with the potential or current partner, it is probably prudent to ensure you have a plan to continue to operate successfully if the relationship does not work out as planned or previously agreed. By taking this ‘control your own destiny’ approach and having partnership replacement or augmentation alternatives, you can ensure that the inherent business risk of a partnership does not become an unsuccessful organizational gamble. You may be able to recover from an unsuccessful risk, but you may not be able to recover from an unsuccessful gamble.
1 Desmond Young, Rommel: The Desert Fox (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1987), 230.
2 ComplexDiscovery. (2015, October 23). Six Uncomfortable Questions to Ask Your Technology Provider Immediately.
Taken from a combination of public market sizing estimations as shared in leading electronic discovery reports, publications and posts over time, the following eDiscovery Market Size Mashup shares general worldwide market sizing considerations for software and services in the electronic discovery market for the years between 2017 and 2022.
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Packaged services may help legal technology providers bridge the gap between traditional hourly consulting offerings and fully managed services. They may also provide a strong opportunity to create additional sales entry points and potential new revenue streams by making access to current consulting offerings easier to understand, easier to evaluate, and easier to purchase.
An abridged look at the business of eDiscovery investments through the lens of organizations that have funded eDiscovery-related companies between 2009 and today.
The presented listing highlights key industry business moves by sharing the announcement date, acquired company, acquiring or investing company, and acquisition amount (if known) of significant eDiscovery-related mergers, acquisitions, and investments.
Ralph Losey’s TAR Course has a new class, the Seventeenth Class: Another “Player’s View” of the Workflow. Several other parts of the course have also been updated and edited. The TAR course now has eighteen classes.
With recent eDiscovery provider announcements that highlight the use of the terms “Continuous Active Learning” and “CAL”, provided below is a quick review and current update on Recommind’s (Recommind, Inc.) opposition to the trademark/service mark application by Maura Grossman and Gordan V. Cormack for trademarking CONTINUOUS ACTIVE LEARNING and CAL.
Special Master Maura Grossman recently issued an Order crafting a new validation protocol In Re Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation, (Jan. 3, 2018), which is currently pending in the Northern District of Illinois.
In each round of training, including the first, document reviewers are only looking at a few hundred, to at most, a few thousand documents. A typical complex project takes about ten rounds of machine training to complete by finding all of the relevant documents required.
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This CLE-approved webcast session takes a look at the history of the development of standards and highlights specific issues of importance regarding eDiscovery in criminal matters.
This CLE-approved webcast session will cover how data privacy requirements have evolved over time, the parameters associated with the GDPR, what they mean to your organization and what steps your organization needs to take to ensure compliance with the GDPR.
This CLE-approved webcast covers 2017 case law decisions covered by the eDiscovery Daily blog and what the legal profession can learn from those rulings.
This CLE-approved webcast discusses examples of recent eDiscovery disasters and highlights the common characteristics of those disasters.
The recent eDiscovery failures at Wells Fargo and at the Department of Justice show that eDiscovery mistakes and failures happen even at the largest corporations and government agencies. This CLE-approved webcast will discuss the various issues that occurred in these high-profile cases and what to do to avoid them in your own cases.
The e-Discovery Team’s top twenty-two most interesting cases in 2016. We provide an analysis and key quotes of each, lessons...