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Early case assessment (ECA) spelled out
According to two lawyers at Spilman Thomas & Battle, ECA means “making a concerted effort to complete all the major work within the first 90 to 120 days of a lawsuit’s filing.” Counsel to Counsel, Jan. 2006 at 9. An upfront investment pays off at the back end.
“In these first weeks, counsel identify the types of discovery needed, interview key witnesses, and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the case. Outside counsel can provide an evaluation of the opposing counsel, judge and jury verdicts in the jurisdiction and formulate a detailed budget.”
Accelerating the most important analyses at the outset lets inside counsel set strategy early, understand better the cost-benefit calculation, and focus on resolution rather than protracted adversarial wrangling.
Posted on January 4, 2006 at 10:58 PM in Tools | Permalink
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Rees--
Great post on an important topic -- thanks. I linked to this post and a few others on Early Case Assessments at http://www.settlementperspectives.com/2008/10/easier-said-than-done-early-case-assessments-part-i/.
Thanks again--
John DeGroote
Posted by: John DeGroote | Nov 17, 2008 7:18:29 PM
Have a look at this great tool (that you can use for FREE)! It analyzes your eDiscovery in place and generates over 40 analytical ECA reports for you to use in planning, budgeting and meet and confer prep.
earlyCASE ® is a web-based application which runs on your local PC and analyzes the ESI that your computer can access without the data ever leaving your computer or network. earlyCASE ® allows you to see and understand (early case assessment) all of your data before it is processed for discovery. It supports multiple languages, extracts emails, attachments,metadata, generates hash values, detects duplicates and creates a local inventory database of documents and emails. earlyCASE ® allows users to make informed discovery decisions and easily cut down the size of data sets through filter and culling rules before going into the discovery process and review.
Tom
Posted by: Tom Strack | Jun 23, 2009 1:16:02 PM
