When a company is sued, one of the major expenses associated with litigation is producing documents and other evidence. Producing electronic documents, in particular, can be costly. Companies must sort through, collect, and process significant amounts of data, possibly in the range of terabytes, during the course of litigation. Conse-quently, there is constant pressure to reduce the costs of electronic discovery with strategies that can withstand challenges in court and make sense from a litigation and technological perspective.

Alan Winchester is a member of the NYC office of Harris Beach and the leader of the e-infosm Electronic Information Counseling and Management Team and a member of both the New York State Court System's E-Discovery Working Group and the Sedona Conference E-Discovery Working Group. Alan's work is focused on all phases of information management. For clients engaged in litigation, his group of attorneys and computer engineers are typically retained by other law firms to act as document counsel and assist clients by identifying and securing potentially relevant information and ultimately harvesting it for attorney review and production. His group also assists in the development of cost-effective preservation and discovery production orders and reviews workflow and sampling to minimize document review burden. Harris Beach is unique in this respect, because it provides these services with its own professionals.

The e-info group provides fully managed and supported “end-to-end” document counsel solutions. Separate from litigation, the e-infosm group also assists in the development of computer environments, document management strategies and retention policies that comply with domestic and international regulations.